Search a file/more efficient to use a string or array?

nick1

Greetings,

I'm aware PHP can read the entire contents of a file into a string then from there it's possible to search that string for some data.
And I'm also aware that PHP can read the entire contents of a file into an array then from there it's possible to search that array for some data.

But can PHP search a file (such as a .txt or .html file) for a string of data?
If not, then I guess I'm stuck with the first two options I listed. In that case, lets say I have a .txt file with a bunch of text in it. I want to locate a specific phrase within that text file. Is it more efficient (faster results) to read the contents of that .txt file into a string or an array? Then perform the search.

Thanks in advance,

Nick

samudasu

The file has to be opened first for reading no matter how it's done. If you want to locate a specific phrase then you'll want to load it into a string anyways. Why? Because if you have a phrase that spans two lines, putting the file into an array will cut your phrase in half breaking your search.

example.txt
lets say I have a .txt file
with a bunch of text in it.
I want to locate a specific
phrase.

Putting example.txt in an array will look similar to below. If you're search phrase is "a .txt file with a" then there's no way to find it.

[0] => lets say I have a .txt file 
[1] => with a bunch of text in it.
[2] => I want to locate a specific 
[3] =>phrase.

etully

A client asked me for the same thing and I built a routine to search text files (HTML files and text files) looking for strings of text. The client didn't tell me that they had 20,000 emails that were stored as text files and those would be subject to the search as well. With only a few hundred text files, it was taking 20 seconds to find the matching pages. We never tested it with the whole 20,000 text files.

So then I found Swish-E (free, open source). It searches all 20,000 text files in less than 1 second. And all the work for Search Engine type queries is already done for you. Boolean logic, grouping by parentheses, etc. It took me about an hour to install and configure it. You write a PHP script that makes calls out to Swish-E, it returns the results, and you write your PHP page to display the results (or act on the results) any way you want. Major major time saver.