PHP - Update specific row in CSV file

Question

Is there an effective way to update/delete specific row in CSV file? Every other method included reading contents of entire file, creating temporary file and then replacing

Answer 1

You're going to have to read the entire file. Sorry, no way around that. A CSV is a single, flat, text file with randomly sized fields and rows.

You definitely shouldn't be working directly with a CSV for database operations. You ought to pull the data into a database to work with it, then output it back to CSV when you're done.

You don't mention why you can't use a database, so I'm going to guess it's a resource issue, and you also don't say why you don't want to rewrite the file, so I'm going to guess it's due to performance. You could cache a number of operations and perform them all at once, but you're not going to get away from rewriting all or at least some portion of the file.