PHP fscanf vs fgets

Question

I am able to read an entire string in a line using fgets() but fscanf() is not doing so.

According to PHP manual

fscanf — Parses input from a file according to a format

The function fscanf() is similar to sscanf(), but it takes its input from a file associated with handle and interprets the input according to the specified format, which is described in the documentation for sprintf().

fgets — Gets line from file pointer

Gets a line from file pointer.

Since fscanf() supports formats as mentioned above I can use %s to read an entire line but instead it reads only one word.

Answer 1

The PHP documentation of fscanf() and sscanf() is not complete. The formats are similar to the ones used by printf(), but they're not exactly the same. When you're printing, %s will print any string, but when you're scanning it just reads a word. To get more complete information, you need to read the documentation of the C fscanf() function. Some of this information is also in the comments section of the documentation web page.

To read a whole line with fscanf(), use "%[^\\n]". In fscanf(), $[^characters] means to match any sequence of characters that isn't in the set between the brackes (it's similar to [^characters]* in a regular expression). So this matches any sequence of characters other than newline. See http://php.net/manual/en/function.sscanf.php#56076