feof() is, in fact, reliable. However, you have to use it carefully in conjunction with fgets(). A common (but incorrect) approach is to try something like this:
<?
$fp = fopen("myfile.txt", "r");
while (!feof($fp)) {
$current_line = fgets($fp);
// do stuff to the current line here
}
fclose($fp);
?>
The problem when processing plain text files is that feof() will not return true after getting the last line of input. You need to try to get input _and fail_ before feof() returns true. You can think of the loop above working like this:
* (merrily looping, getting lines and processing them)
* fgets used to get 2nd to last line
* line is processed
* loop back up -- feof returns false, so do the steps inside the loop
* fgets used to get last line
* line is processed
* loop back up -- since the last call to fgets worked (you got the last line), feof still returns false, so you do the steps inside the loop again
* fgets used to try to get another line (but there's nothing there!)
* your code doesn't realize this, and tries to process this non-existent line (typically by doing the same actions again)
* now when your code loops back up, feof returns true, and your loop ends
There's two ways to solve this:
1. You can put an additional test for feof() inside the loop
2. You can move around your calls to fgets() so that the testing of feof() happens in a better location
Here's solution 1:
<?
$fp = fopen("myfile.txt", "r");
while(!feof($fp)) {
$current_line = fgets($fp);
if (!feof($fp)) {
// process current line
}
}
fclose($fp);
?>
And here's solution 2 (IMHO, more elegant):
<?
$fp = fopen("myfile.txt", "r");
$current_line = fgets($fp);
while (!feof($fp)) {
// process current line
$current_line = fgets($fp);
}
fclose($fp);
?>
FYI, the eof() function in C++ works the exact same way, so this isn't just some weird PHP thing...