Gets line from file pointer

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- PHP Manual
- Filesystem Functions
- Gets line from file pointer

# fgets

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

fgets — Gets line from file pointer

### Description

fgets(resource `$stream`, ?int `$length` = `null`): string|false

Gets a line from file pointer.

### Parameters

`stream`

  The file pointer must be valid, and must point to a file successfully opened by fopen() or fsockopen() (and not yet closed by fclose()).

`length`

  Reading ends when `length` - 1 bytes have been read, or a newline (which is included in the return value), or an EOF (whichever comes first). If no length is specified, it will keep reading from the stream until it reaches the end of the line.

### Return Values

Returns a string of up to `length` - 1 bytes read from the file pointed to by `stream`. If there is no more data to read in the file pointer, then `false` is returned.

If an error occurs, `false` is returned.

### Examples

Example #1 Reading a file line by line

    <?php$fp = @fopen("/tmp/inputfile.txt", "r");if ($fp) {    while (($buffer = fgets($fp, 4096)) !== false) {        echo $buffer;    }    if (!feof($fp)) {        echo "Error: unexpected fgets() fail\n";    }    fclose($fp);}?>

### Notes

> Note: If PHP is not properly recognizing the line endings when reading files either on or created by a Macintosh computer, enabling the auto_detect_line_endings run-time configuration option may help resolve the problem.

> Note:

> People used to the 'C' semantics of fgets() should note the difference in how `EOF` is returned.

### See Also

- fgetss() - Gets line from file pointer and strip HTML tags
- fread() - Binary-safe file read
- fgetc() - Gets character from file pointer
- stream_get_line() - Gets line from stream resource up to a given delimiter
- fopen() - Opens file or URL
- popen() - Opens process file pointer
- fsockopen() - Open Internet or Unix domain socket connection
- stream_set_timeout() - Set timeout period on a stream