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# fscanf

(PHP 4 >= 4.0.1, PHP 5)

fscanf -- Parses input from a file according to a format

## Description

mixed fscanf ( resource handle, string format [, mixed &...] )

The function fscanf() is similar to sscanf(), but it takes its input from a file associated with handle and interprets the input according to the specified format, which is described in the documentation for sprintf(). If only two parameters were passed to this function, 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.

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

Example 1. fscanf() Example
`<?php $handle = fopen("users.txt", "r"); while ($userinfo = fscanf($handle, "%s\t%s\t%s\n")) { list ($name, $profession, $countrycode) = $userinfo; //... do something with the values } fclose($handle); ?>`

Example 2. Contents of users.txt
    javier  argonaut        pe
    hiroshi sculptor        jp
    robert  slacker us
    luigi   florist it

> Note: Prior to PHP 4.3.0, the maximum number of characters read from the file was 512 (or up to the first \n, whichever came first). As of PHP 4.3.0 arbitrarily long lines will be read and scanned.

See also fread(), fgets(), fgetss(), sscanf(), printf(), and sprintf().

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