Best way to remove a certain line from a file?

[pkipper]

Hi guys,

Just curious, what is the best way to remove a certain line from a file?

The file that is involved has a data per line, so I guess putting them in an array would be the best idea.

$data = file($filename);

So is there a way to remove a certain array element and shift the entire array up by one (cos i do not want to leave a blank line after deleting)?

I don't think unset() can do as it does not shift the entire array back up, and now i am thinking of array_splice(), but i am not too sure if that will work the way i like it to be.

Any other suggestions? Or any I stuck with array_splice()?

Also what if I want to remove a collection of lines? Like lines 5 to 10? or 12-20? Ahh I think I will worry about removing a collection of lines later 🙂.

[tommynanda]

This might not be good solution in terms of CPU but works

$number=12; // Number of the line you dont want
$i=1; // Start Counter

$fname = fopen("file_u_want.txt","rt");
$fname2 = fopen("tempfile.txt","at");
while(!feof($fname))
{
$temp = fgets($fname);
if($i!=$number)
   fwrite($fname2,"$temp\n");
}
fclose($fname);
fclose($fname2);

unlink("file_u_want.txt");
rename("tempfile.txt","file_u_want.txt");

This should do the job... but like I said, may not be efficient...
and yeah... you need permisions

Good Luck
TommYNandA

[TheDefender]

If you use the unset() function, it is doable, but you need to combine the implode() and explode() functions to recreate the array indexes...