Split a text file in PHP

Question

How can I split a large text file into separate files by character count using PHP? So a 10,000 character file split every 1000 characters would be split into 10 files. Further, can I split only after a full stop is found?

Thanks.

UPDATE 1: I like zombats code and I removed some errors and have come up with the following, but does anyone know how to only split after a full stop?

$i = 1;
    $fp = fopen("test.txt", "r");
    while(! feof($fp)) {
        $contents = fread($fp,1000);
        file_put_contents('new_file_'.$i.'.txt', $contents);
        $i++;
    }

UPDATE 2: I took zombats suggestion and modified the code to that below and it seems to work -

$i = 1;
    $fp = fopen("test.txt", "r");
    while(! feof($fp)) {
        $contents = fread($fp,20000);
        $contents .= stream_get_line($fp,1000,".");
        $contents .=".";

        file_put_contents("Split/".$tname."/"."new_file_".$i.".txt", $contents);
        $i++;
    }

Answer 1

The easiest way is to read the contents of the file, split the content, then save to two other files. If your files are more than a few gigabytes, you're going to have a problem doing it in PHP due to integer size limitations.

Answer 2

You could also write a class to do this for you.

<?php

/**
* filesplit class : Split big text files in multiple files
*
* @package
* @author Ben Yacoub Hatem <[email protected]>
* @copyright Copyright (c) 2004
* @version $Id$ - 29/05/2004 09:02:10 - filesplit.class.php
* @access public
**/
class filesplit{
    /**
     * Constructor
     * @access protected
     */
    function filesplit(){

    }

    /**
     * File to split
     * @access private
     * @var string
     **/
    var $_source = 'logs.txt';

    /**
     *
     * @access public
     * @return string
     **/
    function Getsource(){
        return $this->_source;
    }

    /**
     *
     * @access public
     * @return void
     **/
    function Setsource($newValue){
        $this->_source = $newValue;
    }

    /**
     * how much lines per file
     * @access private
     * @var integer
     **/
    var $_lines = 1000;

    /**
     *
     * @access public
     * @return integer
     **/
    function Getlines(){
        return $this->_lines;
    }

    /**
     *
     * @access public
     * @return void
     **/
    function Setlines($newValue){
        $this->_lines = $newValue;
    }

    /**
     * Folder to create splitted files with trail slash at end
     * @access private
     * @var string
     **/
    var $_path = 'logs/';

    /**
     *
     * @access public
     * @return string
     **/
    function Getpath(){
        return $this->_path;
    }

    /**
     *
     * @access public
     * @return void
     **/
    function Setpath($newValue){
        $this->_path = $newValue;
    }

    /**
     * Configure the class
     * @access public
     * @return void
     **/
    function configure($source = "",$path = "",$lines = ""){
        if ($source != "") {
            $this->Setsource($source);
        }
        if ($path!="") {
            $this->Setpath($path);
        }
        if ($lines!="") {
            $this->Setlines($lines);
        }
    }


    /**
     *
     * @access public
     * @return void
     **/
    function run(){
        $i=0;
        $j=1;
        $date = date("m-d-y");
        unset($buffer);

        $handle = @fopen ($this->Getsource(), "r");
        while (!feof ($handle)) {
          $buffer .= @fgets($handle, 4096);
          $i++;
              if ($i >= $split) {
              $fname = $this->Getpath()."part.$date.$j.txt";
               if (!$fhandle = @fopen($fname, 'w')) {
                    print "Cannot open file ($fname)";
                    exit;
               }

               if (!@fwrite($fhandle, $buffer)) {
                   print "Cannot write to file ($fname)";
                   exit;
               }
               fclose($fhandle);
               $j++;
               unset($buffer,$i);
                }
        }
        fclose ($handle);
    }


}
?>


Usage Example
<?php
/**
* Sample usage of the filesplit class
*
* @package filesplit
* @author Ben Yacoub Hatem <[email protected]>
* @copyright Copyright (c) 2004
* @version $Id$ - 29/05/2004 09:14:06 - usage.php
* @access public
**/

require_once("filesplit.class.php");

$s = new filesplit;

/*
$s->Setsource("logs.txt");
$s->Setpath("logs/");
$s->Setlines(100); //number of lines that each new file will have after the split.
*/

$s->configure("logs.txt", "logs/", 2000);
$s->run();
?>

Source http://www.weberdev.com/get_example-3894.html

Answer 3

You should be able to accomplish this easily with a basic fread(). You can specify how many bytes you want to read, so it's trivial to read in an exact amount and output it to a new file.

Try something like this:

$i = 1;
$fp = fopen("test.txt",'r');
while(! feof($fp)) {
    $contents = fread($fp,1000);
    file_put_contents('new_file_'.$i.'.txt',$contents);
    $i++;
}

EDIT

If you wish to stop after a certain amount of length OR on a certain character, then you could use stream_get_line() instead of fread(). It's almost identical, except it allows you to specify any ending delimiter you wish. Note that it does not return the delimeter as part of the read.

$contents = stream_get_line($fp,1000,".");