PHP echo issue while in a while loop

Question

I read in a csv file by using a while loop:

while (($data = fgetcsv($handle, null, ",")) !== FALSE) 

and i want to skip the first row because this is the title row and i want to display on the screen "first line skipped".

if($data[0]=="title")
echo "Title row..skipping<br />";  
else
//do stuff

The problem is since its in a while loop it prints out "Title row...skipping" a bunch of times shown here:

Checking row 0...
Title row..skipping
Title row..skipping
Title row..skipping
Title row..skipping
Title row..skipping
Title row..skipping
Title row..skipping
Checking row 1...

what should i do so it only prints it out once? does it have something to do with php's output buffering?

Answer 1

if($data[0]=="title") {
  if (!$skipped) {
    echo "Title row..skipping<br />";
    $skipped = true;
  }
}
else
//do stuff

Answer 2

Or call fgetcsv($handle, null, ",") once without assignment, to move the handler forward by one line:

fgetcsv($handle, null, ",");

while (($data = fgetcsv($handle, null, ",")) !== FALSE) {
    // do stuff
}

Answer 3

If you know for a certain that you only need to skip the first line then;

if(!$skipped)
{
    echo "Title row..skipping<br />";
    $skipped = true;
}
else
//do stuff

Answer 4

I think it'd be more elegant to use foreach:

foreach data as item {
  if (item == "title") {
   echo "Skipping title<br/>";
  }
}

How you have it now, you are checking if (data[0] == "title") every time you loop. data[0] will always equal "title", so it will always evaluate to true. You could increment an $index variable and do something like if (data[$index] == $title) then $index++ near the bottom of the loop, but why do that when foreach will essentially do that for you.