ftell
Writing after ftruncate
I didnt expect that I can write in the middle of nowhere. I thought that I would write at the beginning of the file but the first 4 bytes were filled automatically with NULLs followed by "56":
<?php
$str1 = 1234;
$str2 = 56;
$datei = "test.txt";
$dh = fopen($datei,"w");
fwrite($dh, $str1);
fclose($dh);
$dh = fopen ($datei,"r+");
echo "content: ".fread($dh, filesize($datei))."<br>";
echo "pointer after fread at: ".ftell($dh)."<br>";
ftruncate($dh, 0);
echo "pointer after truncate at: ".ftell($dh)."<br>";
fwrite($dh, $str2);
echo "pointer after fwrite at: ".ftell($dh)."<br>";
rewind($dh);
echo "pointer after rewind at: ".ftell($dh)."<br>";
$str = fread($dh, 6);
echo "content: $str<br>in ASCII: ";
for($i = 0; $i < 6; $i++)
echo ord($str{$i})."-";
fclose($dh);
/*
OUTPUT:
content: 1234
pointer after fread at: 4
pointer after truncate at: 4
pointer after fwrite at: 6
pointer after rewind at: 0
content: 56
in ASCII: 0-0-0-0-53-54
*/
?>
So not only ftruncate is filling an empty file up with NULLs as in the note before. Fread is filling leading space with NULLs too.
ftruncate
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
ftruncate — Kürzt eine Datei auf die angegebene Länge
Beschreibung
bool ftruncate
( resource $handle
, int $size
)
Nimmt den Dateizeiger handle , und verkürzt die Datei auf die Länge size . Gibt bei Erfolg TRUE zurück, im Fehlerfall FALSE.
add a note
User Contributed Notesftruncate
rc at opelgt dot org
06-Jan-2008 07:49
06-Jan-2008 07:49
mike at mikeleigh dot com
04-Jan-2007 09:30
04-Jan-2007 09:30
I have produced a number of tests below which walk through my findings of the ftruncate function. For the impatient among you ftruncate can be used to increase the size of the file and will fill the rest of the file with CHR 0 or ASCII NULL. It can be used as a very convenient way of making a 1Mb file for instance.
Test 1
<?php
/*
Test 1: Write "some text" to a file.
Result: The text "some text" should be present in test_1.txt
*/
$fp = fopen('test_1.txt', 'w+');
fwrite($fp, 'some text');
?>
The first test is only here to make sure that a file can be written with some text.
Test 2
<?php
/*
Test 2: Write "some text" to a file and ftruncate the file to 4 bytes.
Result: The text "some" should be present in test_2.txt as the file will have been truncated to 4 bytes.
*/
$fp = fopen('test_2.txt', 'w+');
fwrite($fp, 'some text');
ftruncate($fp, 4);
?>
As expected the file has been truncated to 4 bytes.
Test 3
<?php
/*
Test 3: Write "some text" to a file and ftruncate the file to 40 bytes.
Result: The text "some text" should be present in test_3.txt as the file will have been truncated to 40 bytes.
*/
$fp = fopen('test_3.txt', 'w+');
fwrite($fp, 'some text');
ftruncate($fp, 40);
?>
Interestingly the file has increased from 9 bytes to 40 bytes. The remaining 31 bytes of the file are ASCII code 0 or NULL though.
Further notes can be found here http://mikeleigh.com/links/ftruncate