Topic: Displaying a portion of a file to a text area

[JasonGP58]

I'm brand new to php. 

I was wondering if anyone had some advice on the best way to grab a portion of a file from "//startHere" to "//endHere".

Any forums, tutorials, or general advice would be greatly appreciated.

[The Little Guy]

This works for me, give it a try:

$string = 'This is text above
//startHere 
This is text inside 
//endHere this is text below.';

$string = preg_replace("~\n~",' ',$string);

if(preg_match('~//startHere(.+?)//endHere~i',$string,$matches)){
     $myText = $matches[1];
}else{
     $myText = '';
}
echo '<textarea>'.$myText.'</textarea>';

[DarkWater]

LittleGuy, that won't work, because you forgot the s modifier so that the . will actually match the newlines:

Code: [Select]

~//startHere(.+?)//endHere~is

Try that in preg_match.

[JasonGP58]

Will that print:

//start here
This is text inside

because that's my goal. Sorry that I wasn't clear enough on the first post. I need to include the 1st comment and exclude the second.

[DarkWater]

Change Little Guy's code to:

Code: [Select]


$string = 'This is text above
//startHere
This is text inside
//endHere this is text below.';

if(preg_match('~//startHere(.+?)//endHere~is',$string,$matches)){
     $myText = '//startHere' . "\n{$matches[1]}";
}else{
     $myText = '';
}
echo '<textarea>'.$myText.'</textarea>';

And sorry, Little Guy, I didn't see that preg_replace that you had on top.  That's not how it should be done anyway, you should use the s modifier.

[JasonGP58]

I'm pulling the data from a file, so would I be able to use pregmatch. I wouldn't want to read the entire file, then use a preg match, because that'd be a huge waste of space and time.

Could I not use file_get_contents then somehow set its parameters up with fseek?

[ibechane]

If you are reading in line by line, you can skip the preg_match and just search for the delimiters (assuming they are on separate lines). Try this (haven't tested it).

Code: [Select]

<?php
$resource = fopen('/file/location','r') or die('could not open file');
$output = '';
while(!feof($resource)) {

   $newline = fgets($resource);

   if($newline == '//starthere') {
      while(!feof($resource) AND $newline!='//endhere') {
         $output .= $newline;
         $newline = fgets($resource);
      }
      break;
   }

}
echo '<textarea>'.$output.'</textarea>';
?>