How Can I Efficiently Read Exceedingly Large Files in PHP?

Reading Exceedingly Large Files in PHP

Despite encountering difficulties reading moderately sized (6 MB) files using PHP's fopen, the default settings should suffice. It's crucial to investigate less obvious potential errors before delving into specialized solutions.

Consider Timeouts and Memory Limits:

Inspect your script's timeout configuration. Exceeding the default duration (often around 30 seconds) may result in an interruption during file I/O. Additionally, verify your script's memory usage to rule out any warnings indicating memory constraints. Reading large files into arrays may require increased memory allocation.

Optimize with fgets:

If the previous diagnostics yield no clues, explore the possibility of reading files line-by-line using the fgets function. This approach incurs a smaller memory footprint as it processes data incrementally:

$handle = fopen("/tmp/uploadfile.txt", "r") or die("Couldn't get handle");
if ($handle) {
    while (!feof($handle)) {
        $buffer = fgets($handle, 4096);
        // Process buffer here..
    }
    fclose($handle);
}

Troubleshooting Additional Errors:

The error message "PHP doesn't seem to throw an error, it just returns false" can signify various issues:

• Verify the accuracy of the file path ($rawfile) relative to the script's execution directory. Consider setting an absolute path.
• Check for any unusual permissions issues. Ensure that the user running the script has read access to the target file.

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