Master PHP’s fgetc(): Read Files & User Input Character by Character

In PHP, the fgetc() function reads a single character from an opened file and moves the file pointer forward.

Before using fgetc(), you must open the file with fopen(). Example:

$file = fopen("example.txt", "r");
if ($file) {
    // file opened successfully
    // other file operations
} else {
    echo "Unable to open file!";
}

After opening the file, you can read characters using fgetc() with the syntax fgetc($file). Example that reads the entire file character by character:

$file = fopen("example.txt", "r");
if ($file) {
    while (($char = fgetc($file)) !== false) {
        echo $char;
    }
    fclose($file);
} else {
    echo "Unable to open file!";
}

The while loop continues until fgetc() returns false, indicating the end of the file. fgetc() can also read a character from user input via STDIN. Example:

echo "Enter a character: ";
$input = fgetc(STDIN);

switch ($input) {
    case 'a':
        echo "You entered the letter a";
        break;
    case 'b':
        echo "You entered the letter b";
        break;
    case 'c':
        echo "You entered the letter c";
        break;
    default:
        echo "Invalid character entered";
}

In summary, fgetc() is a PHP function for reading a single character from a file or from user input, and the examples above demonstrate its proper usage.