How to read a large file line by line?

I want to read a file line by line, but without completely loading it in memory.

My file is too large to open in memory, and if try to do so I always get out of memory errors.

The file size is 1 GB.

You can use the fgets() function to read the file line by line:

$handle = fopen("inputfile.txt", "r");
if ($handle) {
    while (($line = fgets($handle)) !== false) {
        // process the line read.
    }

    fclose($handle);
} else {
    // error opening the file.
} 

if ($file = fopen("file.txt", "r")) {
    while(!feof($file)) {
        $line = fgets($file);
        # do same stuff with the $line
    }
    fclose($file);
}

You can use an object oriented interface class for a file - SplFileObject http://php.net/manual/en/splfileobject.fgets.php (PHP 5 >= 5.1.0)

<?php

$file = new SplFileObject("file.txt");

// Loop until we reach the end of the file.
while (!$file->eof()) {
    // Echo one line from the file.
    echo $file->fgets();
}

// Unset the file to call __destruct(), closing the file handle.
$file = null;