PHP - Returning the last line in a file?

Question

I'm guessing it's fgets, but I can't find the specific syntax. I'm trying to read out (in a string I'm thinking is easier) the last line added to a log file.

Answer 1

You either have to read the file in line by line and save the last read line to get it.

Or if on unix/linux you might consider using the shell command tail

tail -n 1 filename

Answer 2

This looks like it is what you are looking for:

tekkie.flashbit.net: Tail functionality in PHP

It implements a function that uses fseek() with a negative index to roll up the file from the end. You can define how many lines you want to be returned.

Answer 3

If you want to read a file line by line the file function reads the contents of a file, line by line and returns each line as an element of an array.

So you could do something simple like:

$lines    = file('log.txt');
$lastLine = array_pop($lines);

Answer 4

The simplest naive solution is simply:

$file = "/path/to/file";
$data = file($file);
$line = $data[count($data)-1];

Though, this WILL load the whole file into memory. Possibly a problem (or not). A better solution is this:

$file = escapeshellarg($file); // for the security concious (should be everyone!)
$line = `tail -n 1 $file`;

Answer 5

define('YOUR_EOL', "\n");
$fp = fopen('yourfile.txt', 'r');

$pos = -1; $line = ''; $c = '';
do {
    $line = $c . $line;
    fseek($fp, $pos--, SEEK_END);
    $c = fgetc($fp);
} while ($c != YOUR_EOL);

echo $line;

fclose($fp);

This is better, since it does not load the complete file into memory...

Set YOUR_EOL to your correct line endings, if you use the same line endings as the default line endings of the OS where your script resides, you could use the constant PHP_EOL.

Answer 6

This one wont break for a 1 or 0 line file.

function readlastline($fileName)
{

       $fp = @fopen($fileName, "r");
       $begining = fseek($fp, 0);      
       $pos = -1;
       $t = " ";
       while ($t != "\n") {
             fseek($fp, $pos, SEEK_END);
             if(ftell($fp) == $begining){
              break;
             }
             $t = fgetc($fp);
             $pos = $pos - 1;
       }
       $t = fgets($fp);
       fclose($fp);
       return $t;
}