input record separator

[ktsirig]

Hi all!
I have written some scripts in Perl, where I make use of the $/ ,the input record separator.
My question is whether such a thing exists also in PHP, and, if so, how can I separate multiple records in a text file, that are separated (let's say by //).

In Perl I write: $/="//";

In PHP????

[Atolar]

woa. sry, i know nothing about perl.

EDIT: if you mean like when ur inserting stuff through mysql, you seperate the values with ',' as in... insert values('value1', 'value2')

[unclekyky]

try the function explode('//', $text);

more at php.net

[christopherspaulin]

The goal is to read lines in a file separated by something other than a new line character.

Instead of using this Perl code:

my $old_input_line_separator = $/; # saved
$/ = '<hr>'; # switch to <hr>, which separates records in a text file
...Read records from a file...
$/ = $old_input_line_separator; # restored

You can use this PHP code to get the second record in the file, file_name.txt, where each record is separated by <hr>. Each record has multiple lines. <hr> is on its own line:

$file = '/directory/subdirectory/file_name.txt';
$file_handle = fopen($file, 'r');
$count = 0;
while ($line = stream_get_line($file_handle, 0, '<hr>'))
{
++$count; // Increase the count by 1.
if ($count == 2)
{
echo "$line";
break;
}
}
fclose($file_handle);

Explanation:

The PHP function stream_get_line() has a parameter (third parameter) to separate a line by your own separator instead of a new line character.

string stream_get_line ( resource $handle , int $length [, string $ending ] )

I used 0 for the length (second parameter) so that it wouldn't use the length to separate the lines, but only use the line separator (third parameter). It reads a line until it comes to '<hr>'. The '<hr>' is not included in the line that it returns. The first parameter, the resource handle, comes from fopen() when I opened the file.

Reading ends when length bytes have been read, when the string specified by ending is found (which is not included in the return value), or on EOF (whichever comes first).

See PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor for more information on stream_get_line().