readfile() displays filesize() in stdout

[ppowell]

<?php

 /*------------------------------------------------------------------------
   This function is the PHP version of the TCL proc PRODUCE_MENUBAR which 
   will produce the menubar for all PHP files

   Syntax: echo PRODUCE_MENUBAR() 
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------*/


 function PRODUCE_MENUBAR() {
  global $HTTP_HOST;
  global $REQUEST_URI;
  $tcl = (preg_match("/\bdyndns\b/i", $HTTP_HOST)) ? 'tclsh83' : 'tclsh';
  $path = (preg_match("/\bdyndns\b/i", $HTTP_HOST)) ? 'cgi-bin' : 'cgi-bin/cgiwrap/ppowell';
  $menubar = @readfile("http://$HTTP_HOST/$path/menubar.cgi");
  $menubar = preg_replace("/NON_CGI_REQUEST_URI/", "$REQUEST_URI", $menubar);
  return $menubar;
 }

?>

This simple function will do a "scrape" of a URL and will reproduce it within an existing PHP script.

The contents of the URL display just fine every time, however, upon doing readfile() I will wind up seeing the numerical filesize() also display immediately after the contents of $menubar are displayed.

I could suppress filesize() number at the end, however, I know that's risky business as it could affect the rest of the contents of $menubar. Is this normal behavior?

OS: FreeBSD
PHP: 4.3.6
Server: Apache 1.3.29
Browsers: Mozilla Firefox, Netscape 7.1, IE 6.0

Phil

[Weedpacket]

[man]readfile[/man]
Reads a file and writes it to the output buffer.

Returns the number of bytes read from the file.

See also

[man]readfile[/man]
See also [man]fpassthru/man, [man]file/man, [man]fopen/man, [man]include/man, [man]require/man, [man]virtual/man, [man]file_get_contents/man, and Appendix I.

[ppowell]

Amazing what I miss at 3am. How do I suppress filesize() then yet return the results of readfile()?

I tried

$results = preg_replace('/(.*)[0-9]{3,4}$/i', '$1', $results);

but that does not efficiently remove the latent filesize() numbers, a few stray behind and display anyway.

And frankly, with PHP upgrading always taking place, how can I safeguard that any hard-fixed end-number removal from the results of readfile() won't cause future breakage upon a PHP version upgrade, say for instance, that readfile() returns ONLY the results of a read and not filesize()?

Thanx
Phil

[Weedpacket]

See the "See also:".

[silent]

readfile outputs directly... it doesn't return the contents.
Use something like

$menubar = file_get_contents('thefile');

And if you need the size of the file, just follow that with a filesize('thefile') call.

Hope it helps.

[ppowell]

Cool thanx for your help with file_get_contents(), that did the trick!

Phil

[silent]

No problem! Glad I could help.

If you're done, make sure to mark this thread resolved!