Parses input from file according to a format

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- PHP Manual
- SplFileObject
- Parses input from file according to a format

# SplFileObject::fscanf

(PHP 5 >= 5.1.0, PHP 7, PHP 8)

SplFileObject::fscanf — Parses input from file according to a format

### Description

public SplFileObject::fscanf(string `$format`, mixed `&...$vars`): array|int|null

Reads a line from the file and interprets it according to the specified `format`.

Any whitespace in the `format` string matches any whitespace in the line from the file. This means that even a tab (`\t`) in the format string can match a single space character in the input stream.

### Parameters

`format`

  The interpreted format for `string`, which is described in the documentation for sprintf() with following differences:

  - Function is not locale-aware.
  - `F`, `g`, `G` and `b` are not supported.
  - `D` stands for decimal number.
  - `i` stands for integer with base detection.
  - `n` stands for number of characters processed so far.
  - `s` stops reading at any whitespace character.
  - `*` instead of `argnum$` suppresses the assignment of this conversion specification.
`vars`

  The optional assigned values.

### Return Values

If only one parameter is passed to this method, the values parsed will be returned as an array. Otherwise, if optional parameters are passed, the function will return the number of assigned values. The optional parameters must be passed by reference.

### Examples

Example #1 SplFileObject::fscanf() example

    <?php
    $file = new SplFileObject("misc.txt");
    while ($userinfo = $file->fscanf("%s %s %s")) {
        list ($name, $profession, $countrycode) = $userinfo;
        // Do something with $name $profession $countrycode
    }
    ?>

Contents of users.txt

    javier   argonaut    pe
    hiroshi  sculptor    jp
    robert   slacker     us
    luigi    florist     it

### See Also

- fscanf() - Parses input from a file according to a format
- sscanf() - Parses input from a string according to a format
- printf() - Output a formatted string
- sprintf() - Return a formatted string