Problem Outputting variables in Strings.

[amPAR]

  function fetch_template($filename) {
    $handle = fopen($filename, "rb");
    $contents = fread($handle, filesize($filename));
    fclose($handle);

echo $contents;

This is just code to apply the contents of a file into a string. In this case that string is $contents. However, lets say...

$contents contains "Welcome Back, $name"

When this is echoed it comes out exactly as above "Welcome Back, $name"

I want it to parse(I think) the variable so that it will return what the string $name holds instead of returning $name.

For example if the script was

   $name = "Alfred";
   fetch_template("welcome.html");

   function fetch_template($filename) {
    $handle = fopen($filename, "rb");
    $contents = fread($handle, filesize($filename));
    fclose($handle);

echo $contents;

and welcome.html contains this.

welcome back, $name

I want that to echo:

welcome back, Alfred

not

welcome back, $name.

---

I know there is some function that will do this, I've used it before, but it's been about 11 1/2 months since I looked at php so any help here would be much appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

[jazz_snob]

eval( 'echo (' . file_get_contents('welcome.html') .');' );

[amPAR]

I'm currently running 4.1.1 so file_get_contents does not work. I know there is another way of doing this. But thanks jazz_snob.

[jazz_snob]

OK. Don't echo inside your function, return the contents instead. $name won't have scope inside your function.

$name = 'narf';

$contents = fetch_template( 'welcome.html' );
eval( 'echo (' . $contents .');' );

 function fetch_template($filename) {
    $handle = fopen($filename, "rb");
    $contents = fread($handle, filesize($filename));
    fclose($handle);
    return $contents;   

 }