How do I open a file from line X to line Y in PHP?

Question

The closest I\'ve seen in the PHP docs, is to fread() a given length, but that doesnt specify which line to start from. Any other suggestions?

Answer 1

Yes, you can do that easily with SplFileObject::seek

$file = new SplFileObject('filename.txt');
$file->seek(1000);
for($i = 0; !$file->eof() && $i < 1000; $i++) {
    echo $file->current(); 
    $file->next();
}

This is a method from the SeekableIterator interface and not to be confused with fseek.

And because SplFileObject is iterable you can do it even easier with a LimitIterator:

$file = new SplFileObject('longFile.txt');
$fileIterator = new LimitIterator($file, 1000, 2000);
foreach($fileIterator as $line) {
    echo $line, PHP_EOL;
}

Again, this is zero-based, so it's line 1001 to 2001.