Using PHP fgetc() to Read Characters from Files and Standard Input

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

Before using fgetc(), a file must be opened with fopen(). Example:

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

The syntax of fgetc() is simply fgetc($file), where $file is the file resource.

To read an entire file character by character, a while loop can be used:

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

The loop continues until fgetc() returns false, indicating end‑of‑file. fgetc() can also read a single character from standard input. The following example prompts the user and processes the input with a switch statement:

echo "Please 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";
}

By understanding and applying fgetc(), developers can perform fine‑grained file reading and interactive character input in PHP backend applications.