PHP Manual: file

Description

array file ( string filename [, int use_include_path [, resource context]] )

Identical to file_get_contents(), except that file() returns the file in an array. Each element of the array corresponds to a line in the file, with the newline still attached. Upon failure, file() returns FALSE.

You can use the optional use_include_path parameter and set it to "1", if you want to search for the file in the include_path, too.

<?php
// Get a file into an array.  In this example we'll go through HTTP to get 
// the HTML source of a URL.
$lines = file('http://www.example.com/');

// Loop through our array, show HTML source as HTML source; and line numbers too.
foreach ($lines as $line_num => $line) {
    echo "Line #<b>{$line_num}</b> : " . htmlspecialchars($line) . "<br />\n";
}

// Another example, let's get a web page into a string.  See also file_get_contents().
$html = implode('', file('http://www.example.com/'));
?>

Tip: You can use a URL as a filename with this function if the fopen wrappers have been enabled. See fopen() for more details on how to specify the filename and Appendix M for a list of supported URL protocols.

Note: Each line in the resulting array will include the line ending, so you still need to use rtrim() if you do not want the line ending present.

Note: If you are having problems with PHP not recognizing the line endings when reading files either on or created by a Macintosh computer, you might want to enable the auto_detect_line_endings run-time configuration option.

Note: As of PHP 4.3.0 you can use file_get_contents() to return the contents of a file as a string.
In PHP 4.3.0 file() became binary safe.

Note: Context support was added with PHP 5.0.0. For a description of contexts, refer to Reference CLII, Stream Functions.

Warning

When using SSL, Microsoft IIS will violate the protocol by closing the connection without sending a close_notify indicator. PHP will report this as "SSL: Fatal Protocol Error" when you reach the end of the data. To workaround this, you should lower your error_reporting level not to include warnings. PHP 4.3.7 and higher can detect buggy IIS server software when you open the stream using the https:// wrapper and will suppress the warning for you. If you are using fsockopen() to create an ssl:// socket, you are responsible for detecting and suppressing the warning yourself.