Hey all,

I'm sure some of you know about my flat file database troubles, and you've all said "Use SQL!". I know. I don't really want to. I want to try this, so if you're just going to post "Use SQL!", I di'nt really want to hear it

Now that that's done with, here's my question:

How can I turn this English to PHP?

Open database
Make it a variable 
look for the line that starts with a given number (a serial number, coming from a variable)
write everything in the database from that serial number...
 ...until you hit the delimiter
display that (the part from the given serial number (it could be 200 lines in) to the next delimiter (from that serial number)

So I really need to just place the file pointer at the serial number, somehow, then echo everything from there to the page until you hit the delimiter. For example:

DATABASE:

12345 CONTENT
CONTENT
CONTENT
CONTENT CONTENT
CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT
CONTENT
CONTENT |

54321 CONTENT 2
CONTENT 2
CONTENT 2
CONTENT 2 CONTENT 2
CONTENT 2 CONTENT 2 CONTENT 2
CONTENT 2
CONTENT 2 CONTENT 2
CONTENT 2
CONTENT 2 |

62648 CONTENT 3
CONTENT 3
CONTENT 3CONTENT 3
CONTENT 3CONTENT 3CONTENT 3
CONTENT 3CONTENT 3
CONTENT 3CONTENT 3CONTENT 3CONTENT 3CONTENT 3CONTENT 3
CONTENT 3CONTENT 3CONTENT 3
CONTENT 3CONTENT 3
CONTENT 3CONTENT 3
CONTENT 3CONTENT 3CONTENT 3CONTENT 3

CONTENT 3
CONTENT 3CONTENT 3

CONTENT 3CONTENT 3
CONTENT 3
CONTENT 3CONTENT 3

CONTENT 3

CONTENT 3 |

73251 CONTENT 4
CONTENT 4CONTENT 4CONTENT 4
CONTENT 4CONTENT 4
CONTENT 4
CONTENT 4
CONTENT 4
CONTENT 4

CONTENT 4CONTENT 4CONTENT 4
CONTENT 4CONTENT 4
CONTENT 4CONTENT 4CONTENT 4
CONTENT 4CONTENT 4CONTENT 4CONTENT 4
CONTENT 4CONTENT 4CONTENT 4
CONTENT 4CONTENT 4
CONTENT 4 CONTENT 4 |



PAGE:

READ FROM "62648" to nearest "|" (What I want, in English)

Would output the block of CONTENT 3s. (The red part)

How would I do this? Thanks!

If I'm not clear, I'll post more, but I don't know...

read the file into a string split the string into an array.

then display the element that contains the search string.

Looking at that page, I noticed a function called stream_get_line. It reads everything from the beginning of a file to a given delimiter.

I can't figure out how to use this.

I need to make the script read from a point in the database (find serial number) and display everything from there to the nearest delimiter (stream_get_line).

stream_get_line makes it much simpler, but I still am in the dark here.

I'd even appreciate a small code snippet that would sort of work! Thanks!


Chris, I don't know how to do that. Sorry I tried, and failed. It froze my whole browser because what I made came up with a few hundred errors!

I think chrishirst meant for you to read the whole content into a string first, then split it and find the piece you want.

Yeah, I know. What I don't know is how to do that. I've looked at split, but it says it's deprecated. Could I use explode instead?