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file

PHP function Edit on GitHub ✎

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

Reads entire file into an array

Description

file(string $filename, int $flags = 0, resource|null $context = null): array|false

Reads an entire file into an array.

Note

You can use file_get_contents() to return the contents of a file as a string.

Parameters

filename

Path to the file.

Fopen-wrapper

flags

The optional parameter flags can be one, or more, of the following constants:

FILE_USE_INCLUDE_PATH: Search for the file in the include_path.
FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES: Omit newline at the end of each array element.
FILE_SKIP_EMPTY_LINES: Skip empty lines.
FILE_NO_DEFAULT_CONTEXT: Don't use the default context.

context

Context-support

Return Values

Returns the file in an array. Each element of the array corresponds to a line in the file, with the newline still attached. Upon failure, file() returns false.

Note

Each line in the resulting array will include the line ending, unless FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES is used.

Line-endings

Errors/Exceptions

As of PHP 8.3.0, throws a ValueError if flags includes any invalid values, such as FILE_APPEND.

Emits an E_WARNING level error if the file does not exist.

Changelog

Version	Description
8.3.0	`ValueError` is thrown for any invalid values of `flags`.

Examples

file() example

php

<?php
// Get a file into an array.  In this example we'll go through HTTP to get
// the HTML source of a URL.
$lines = file('http://www.example.com/');

// Loop through our array, show HTML source as HTML source; and line numbers too.
foreach ($lines as $line_num => $line) {
    echo "Line #<b>{$line_num}</b> : " . htmlspecialchars($line) . "<br />\n";
}

// Using the optional flags parameter
$trimmed = file('somefile.txt', FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES | FILE_SKIP_EMPTY_LINES);
?>