Use PHP to convert text file into array

Question

I have a text file here which I need to be able to convert into rows to extract the second, third, fourth, and fifth values from.

The first 7 values of each row are tab delimited, then there is a newline, then the final three values are tab delimited.

I removed the interrupting newlines so that each row is fully tab delimited.

<?php

$file="140724.txt";

$fopen = fopen($file, "r");

$fread = fread($fopen,filesize("$file"));

fclose($fopen);

$remove = "\n";

split = explode($remove, $fread);

foreach ($split as $string)
{
echo "$string<br><br>";
}

?>

Which produces this.

I'm not sure where to progress from this point. I'm teaching myself PHP and am still quite new to it, so I don't even know if where I've started from is a good place. My instinct is to write the previous output to a new textfile, then create another block of code similar to the first but exploding based on tabs, this time.

Help?

Answer 1

You can process this file in one go like this:

<?php
    $file="140724.txt";

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

    $fread = fread($fopen,filesize($file));

    fclose($fopen);

    $remove = "\n";

    $split = explode($remove, $fread);

    $array[] = null;
    $tab = "\t";

    foreach ($split as $string)
    {
        $row = explode($tab, $string);
        array_push($array,$row);
    }
    echo "<pre>";
    print_r($array);
    echo "</pre>";
?>

The result will be a jagged array:

You will need to clean up the 1st and the last element.