I need to find a specic line of text, from a text-file, and then copy it to a new text-file:
1: I have a text file with several lines of text, eg:
JOHN
MIKE
BEN
*BJAMES
PETE
2: So, I read that text-files contents into an array, with each line of text, placed into a seperate element of the array.
3: Then I tested each element of the array, to find the line that starts with, say: *B ie:
if ( preg_match( "/^\*(B)/",$contents[$a] ) )
Which works ok...
4: Then I copy (WRITE) that line of text, to a new text-file.
Q: So how can I remove the '*B' from that line of text, BEFORE I WRITE it to the new text-file ?
If you already use preg_match, you can modify your regex to get what you want in another variable.
if (preg_match('/^\*B(.*)$/', $contens[$a], $matches)
{
fwrite($targetPointer, $matches[1]);
}
After using preg_matchthe variable $matches holds the single matches of subparts of the regex enclosed in brackets. So the relevant part of your line ist matched by (.*) and saved into $matches[1].
With substr or preg_replace.
Have a try with:
preg_replace('/^\*B/', '', $content[$a], -1, $count);
if ($count) {
fwrite($file, $content[$a]);
}
This approach writes the lines as the file is read, which is more memory efficient:
$sourceFile = new SplFileObject('source.txt');
$destinationFile = new SplFileObject('destination.txt', 'w+');
foreach (new RegexIterator($sourceFile, '/^\*B.*/') as $filteredLine) {
$destinationFile->fwrite(
substr_replace($filteredLine, '', 0, 2)
);
}