[RESOLVED] help: question about writing records to txt file

jayyu317

I have the the question when I write records to txt file. I want to use following script

$outputstring = $date."\t".$tireqty." tires\t".$oilqty." oil\t" $sparkqty." spark plugs\t\$".$total ."\t". $address."\n";
$fp = fopen("orders.txt", 'a');
flock($fp, LOCK_EX);
fwrite($fp, $outputstring);
flock($fp, LOCK_UN);
fclose($fp);

to add records to orders.txt file and show records as this way:

15:42, 20th April 4 tires 1 oil 6 spark plugs $434.00 22 Short St, Smalltown
15:43, 20th April 1 tires 0 oil 0 spark plugs $100.00 33 Main Rd, Newtown

But after adding, they are in one line:
15:42, 20th April 4 tires 1 oil 6 spark plugs $434.00 22 Short St, Smalltown15:43, 20th April 1 tires 0 oil 0 spark plugs $100.00 33 Main Rd, Newtown

I replaced above script with . $address."<br>
". But it can not show as what I want, and show "<br>
" between records.

How can I show the records line by line when writing in the txt file?

Thank!

bradgrafelman

How do you know they are on one line? How did you view the file?

If you viewed it in a browser, then of course they appeared to be on one line as browsers don't look for line feeds to determine line breaks - they look for the <br> HTML entity.

jayyu317

Thanks for reply!

I viewed the orders.txt with notepad. They are in one line.

bradgrafelman

Try viewing them with Wordpad; Micro$oft defines a "line break" as a CRLF - a carriage return ( "\r" ) followed by a line feed ( "\n" ). Wordpad, I believe, recognizes the Unix-style "\n" line breaks, however.

jayyu317

Wow, It works.

I am a new learner. You also solve my problem of reading php file. I used notepad to open php files. They are in one line. Now I can get the right script display with wordpad.

Thanks very much!

bradgrafelman

No problem.

I got tired of dealing with the same thing - that's why Microsoft's version of notepad.exe no longer exists on my installation of Windows; it's been replaced with Notepad2. :p

Don't forget to mark this thread resolved.

Weedpacket

Indeed, Notepad is about the only text editor on the planet that is still unable to recognise "\n" as a linebreak (hence the "unrecognised character" blocks that appear).