File Handling in php

For reading file there were two functions available.

1. int readfile ( string $filename , bool $use_include_path = false , resource $context )
   • This function will returns entire file as a string, also display no of character available in files at last.
   • use_include_path
     • First you need to set optional path if you want to use this argument.
     • set_include_path('/home/uttam/Desktop/');
     • Now in readfile(‘index.txt’,true); if index.txt file not found then it will try to found this file in /home/uttam/Desktop
   • Example
     • echo readfile(‘index.txt’);
2. file_get_contents ( string $filename , bool $use_include_path = false , resource $context , int $offset = 0 , int $maxlen )
   
   1. This function will fetch selected range portion of file as a string.
   2. This is the preferred way to read the contents of a file into a string. It will use memory mapping techniques if supported by your OS to enhance performance.

readfile() VS file_get_contents()

readfile will read the file directly into the output buffer, and file_get_contents will load the file into memory, when you echo the result the data is copied from memory to the output buffer effectively using 2 times the memory of readfile.