Reading from comma or tab delimited text file

Question

I need to read the data from a file that can be either comma or tab delimited. I now that there is a function getcsv but it accepts only one possible delimiter.

Any ideas how to handle this?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Read the whole file, or line by line and split it using split.

There you can include a regex with arbitrary delimiters. I have not PHP here to test a statement, but php.net -> search for split(). There you also have a comment relating to regex.

Answer 2

This article may be of use to you

Answer 3

Starting from PHP 5.3, you can use str_getcsv() to read individual lines using different delimiters.

$fp = fopen('mydata.csv', 'r');

while ( !feof($fp) )
{
    $line = fgets($fp, 2048);

    $someCondition = someConditionToDetermineTabOrComma();

    $delimiter = $someCondition ? "," : "\t";
    $data = str_getcsv($line, $delimiter);

    doSomethingWithData($data);
}                              

fclose($fp);

Answer 4

It always bugs me when people make suggestions like this, but I'd definitely suggest seeing if there's some way to ensure a given file is either comma or tab delimited, not both. This will make your job much, much easier.

If this is not possible, I would suggest doing a preg_replace on one of them (probably tab) assuming that you can be sure that one will never be inside an enclosure.

Answer 5

you can try explode ( string $delimiter , string $string [, int $limit ] )

Answer 6

You can specify a delimiter for fgetcsv(). This is an example of reading tab-delimited files,

 while (($data = fgetcsv($handle, 1000, "\t")) !== FALSE) {
    ...
 }