How to format I/O data from script

Question

I was using a script to exclude a list of words from another list of keywords. I would like to change the format of the output. (I found the script on this website and I have made some modification.)

Example:

Phrase from outcome: my word

I would like to add quotes: "my word"

I was thinking that I should put the outcome in new-file.txt and after to rewrite it, but I do not understand how to capture the result. Please, kindly give me some tips. It's my first script :)

Here is the code:

<?php
    $myfile = fopen("newfile1.txt", "w") or die("Unable to open file!");
    //    Open a file to write the changes - test
    $file = file_get_contents("test-action-write-a-doc-small.txt");
    //  In small.txt there are words that will be excluded from the big list  
    $searchstrings = file_get_contents("test-action-write-a-doc-full.txt");
    //  From this list the script is excluding the words that are in small.txt      
    $breakstrings = explode(',',$searchstrings);
    foreach ($breakstrings as $values){
      if(!strpos($file, $values)) {
        echo $values." = Not found;\n";
      } 
      else {
        echo $values." = Found; \n";
      }
    }
    echo "<h1>Outcome:</h1>";  
    foreach ($breakstrings as $values){
      if(!strpos($file, $values)) {
        echo $values."\n";
      } 
    }
    fwrite($myfile, $values); //    write the result in newfile1.txt - test

    //    a loop is missing?

    fclose($myfile); //    close newfile1.txt - test
?>   

There is also a little mistake in the script. It works fine however before entering the list of words in test-action-write-a-doc-full.txt and in test-action-write-a-doc-small.txt I have to put a break for the first line otherwise it does not find the first word.

Example:

In test-action-write-a-doc-small.txt words:

pick, lol, file, cool,

In test-action-write-a-doc-full.txt wwords:

pick, bad, computer, lol, break, file.

Outcome:

Pick = Not found -- here is the mistake.

It happens if I do not put a break for the first line in .txt

lol = Found

file = Found

Thanks in advance for any help! :)

Answer 1

You can collect the accepted words in an array, and then glue all those array elements into one text, which you then write to the file. Like this:

echo "<h1>Outcome:</h1>";  
// Build an array with accepted words
$keepWords = array();
foreach ($breakstrings as $values){
  // remove white space surrounding word
  $values = trim($values);
  // compare with false, and skip empty strings
  if ($values !== "" and false === strpos($file, $values)) {
    // Add word to end of array, you can add quotes if you want
    $keepWords[] = '"' . $values . '"';
  } 
}
// Glue all words together with commas
$keepText = implode(",", $keepWords);
// Write that to file
fwrite($myfile, $keepText);

Note that you should not write !strpos(..) but false === strpos(..) as explained in the docs.

Note also that this method of searching in $file will maybe give unexpected results. For instance, if you have "misery" in your $file string then the word "is" (if separated by commas in the original file) will be refused, as it is found in $file. You might want to review this.

Concerning the second problem

The fact that it does not work without first adding a line-break in your file leads me to think it is related to the Byte-Order Mark (BOM) that appears in the beginning of many UTF-8 encoded files. The problem and possible solutions are discussed here and elsewhere.

If indeed it is this problem, there are two solutions I would propose:

Use your text editor to save the file as UTF-8, but without BOM. For instance, notepad++ has this possibility in the encoding menu.

Or, add this to your code:

function removeBOM($str = "") {
    if (substr($str, 0,3) == pack("CCC",0xef,0xbb,0xbf)) {
        $str = substr($str, 3);
    }
    return $str;
}

and then wrap all your file_get_contents calls with that function, like this:

$file = removeBOM(file_get_contents("test-action-write-a-doc-small.txt"));
//  In small.txt there are words that will be excluded from the big list
$searchstrings = removeBOM(file_get_contents("test-action-write-a-doc-full.txt"));
//  From this list the script is excluding the words that are in small.txt

This will strip these funny bytes from the start of the string taken from the file.