How Can I Use PHP to Find and Display Entire Lines Containing a Specific String in a Text File?

Searching and Echoing Entire Lines from a TXT File in PHP

The task at hand is to develop a PHP script capable of searching a text file (.txt) for a specific string and retrieving the entire line containing that string. Let's break down the solution:

1. File Handling:

$file = 'numorder.txt';
$searchfor = 'aullah1';
$contents = file_get_contents($file);

Here, we obtain the file contents and store them in the $contents variable.

2. Regular Expression (Regex):

$pattern = preg_quote($searchfor, '/');
$pattern = '/^.*' . $pattern . '.*$/m';

We construct a regex pattern that ensures we match the entire line containing the search string (aullah1) using preg_quote and preg_match_all. preg_quote escapes special characters in the search string to ensure it's handled literally by the regex.

3. Searching and Output:

if (preg_match_all($pattern, $contents, $matches)) {
    echo implode("\n", $matches[0]);
} else {
    echo "No matches found";
}

If matches are found, the script will echo each matching line separated by newlines. Otherwise, it will display "No matches found."

By following these steps, you can create a PHP script that successfully searches within a text file and retrieves the entire line containing the specified data.

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