Yep, another PHP question (File manipulation)
 

I need a tutorial or something on file manipulation. I need to be able to search for data values in a file and then overwrite them. I've been searching on php.net but have had no luck.

Any suggestions??

Simple search and replace:

$file = fopen($filename, 'r');

$file[$stringToMatch] = $newValue;



If you want to use regex's:


$file = fopen($filename, 'r');

foreach ($file as $key => $value) {

if (preg_match($pattern, $key)) {

$value = $newValue;

}

}


_h

What kind of data file is it. I mean what format? eg. A key data pair seperated by space on each line.

I'm simply tab delimiting my file. Is that the best way to do it?

I'm not sure what your "regex" thing means???

regex == regular expressions

If its tab deleimited you'de use something like this

$find = "find";

$replace = "replace";

$filename = "/path/to/your/file.txt";



if ($fd = @fopen($filename, "r+")) {

$contents = ereg_replace("$find ([^\t]*)\n", "$find $replace\n", fread($fd, filesize($filename))."\n");

rewind($fd);

if (!@fwrite($fd, $contents)) {

echo "Error writing to file";

}

fclose($fd);

} else {

die("Could not open $filename for reading and writing");

}

Explanation:



read($fd, filesize($filename))."\n"); == Read the whole file into a string & add a newline at the end

ereg_replace("$find ([^\t]*)\n == search through that string for the pattern $find followed by a tab, followed by any number of caracters EXECEPT a new line, followed by a new line


_h

Ok thanks,
I'll work with that and let you know how it goes.

Here's a search and replace class that you might want to peruse

http://www.phpguru.org/search.replace.html

Blurb:

"Class to enable search/replace of files. Can perform the search over one file, multiple files, entire directories with/without subdirectories. Can search using four different search functions, supporting ereg and preg regular expressions."


[Edit]

If you don't know much about regular expressions I'd recemmend that you get ahold of a copy of "Mastering Regular Expressions" from O'Reilly

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/

It's a great book (still workin through it myself ;) )

hope this helped

_h

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