PHP fgetc() | Get Single Character from a File

The PHP fgetc() function fetches/returns a single character from a file. For example:

<?php
   $fp = fopen("fresherearth.txt", "r");
   echo fgetc($fp);
   fclose($fp);
?>

The output produced by above PHP example on fgetc() function, is:

That is, the output is H, which is the first character of the file fresherearth.txt. Here is the snapshot of the opened file fresherearth.txt, available in the current directory:

Note - The fopen() opens a file.

Note - The fclose() closes a file.

You can use feof() to continue fetching until the end of file, and use the fgetc() function to read all the content of file in character-by-character manner. Here is an example:

<?php
   $fp = fopen("fresherearth.txt", "r");
   if($fp)
   {
      while(!feof($fp))
      {
         $character = fgetc($fp);
         if($character == "\n")
            echo "<br>";
         else
            echo $character;
      }
      fclose($fp);
   }
   else
      echo "<p>Unable to open the file!</p>";
?>

Now the output should be:

Note - The feof() check whether the file pointer has been reached to the end of the file.

Recommendation - Since this function fetches data in character-by-character manner, therefore it makes your application slower for large files. But still, if you need to fetch data character-by-character, then you can use fgets() function to read one line, then fetch that line character-by-character, then do the same for second line, and so on.

PHP fgetc() Syntax

The sytax of fgetc() function in PHP, is:

fgetc(filePointer)

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