Summary

In this chapter, you learned how to use the include() family of functions (include_once(), require(), and require_once() thrown in for good measure) to incorporate files into your documents and to execute any PHP code contained in include files. You learned how to use some of PHP's file testing functions and explored functions for reading files by the line, by the character, and in arbitrary chunks. You learned how to write to files, by either replacing or appending to existing content, and you learned how to create, remove, and read directories.

You were also introduced to various methods of communicating with your system and its external applications. Although PHP is a fast and robust language, you may find it more cost- and time-effective to simply utilize preexisting scripts in other languages such as C or Perl. You can access these external applications using the popen(), exec(), system(), and passthru() functions.

You learned how to pipe data to a command using popen(), which is useful for applications that accept data from standard input and when you want to parse data as it is sent to you by an application. You also learned to use exec() and system() to pass commands to the shell and acquire user input. You also learned to use the passthru() function to accept binary data that is the result of a shell command.

Now that you can work with the filesystem a little more, you can save and access substantial amounts of data. If you need to look up data from large files, however, such scripts begin to slow down considerably. When that occurs, you should look into a database system, which will be coming your way shortly!