Filesystem Functions
PHP Manual

fscanf

Parses input from a file according to a format

Description

mixed fscanf ( resource $handle , string $format [, mixed &$... ] )

The function fscanf is similar to sscanf, but it takes its input from a file associated with handle and interprets the input according to the specified format, which is described in the documentation for sprintf.

Any whitespace in the format string matches any whitespace in the input stream. This means that even a tab \t in the format string can match a single space character in the input stream.

Each call to fscanf reads one line from the file.

Parameters

handle

A file system pointer resource that is typically created using fopen.

format

The specified format as described in the sprintf documentation.

...

The optional assigned values.

Return Values

If only two parameters were passed to this function, the values parsed will be returned as an array. Otherwise, if optional parameters are passed, the function will return the number of assigned values. The optional parameters must be passed by reference.

Examples

Example #1 fscanf Example

<?php
$handle = fopen("users.txt", "r");
while ($userinfo = fscanf($handle, "%s\t%s\t%s\n")) {
    list ($name, $profession, $countrycode) = $userinfo;
    //... do something with the values
}
fclose($handle);
?>

Example #2 Contents of users.txt

javier  argonaut        pe
hiroshi sculptor        jp
robert  slacker us
luigi   florist it

See Also

  • fread
  • fgets
  • fgetss
  • sscanf
  • printf
  • sprintf