Difference between file, file_get_contents, and fopen in PHP

file

•  Reads the entire file contents into an array of lines.

file_get_contents

• Reads entire file contents into a string.
• The file_ get_contents() the function gives good results until 40 MBytes and acceptable results until 100 MBytes but file_get_contents() loads the entire file into memory, so it’s not scalable.

fopen

•  The fopen function does something entirely different—it opens a file descriptor, which functions as a stream to read or write the file. It is a much lower-level function, a simple wrapper around the C fopen function, and simply calling fopen won’t do anything but open a stream.

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