// // save an array as tab seperated text file // function write_tabbed_file($filepath, $array, $save_keys=false){ $content = ''; reset($array); while(list($key, $val) = each($array)){ // replace tabs in keys and values to [space] $key = str_replace("t", " ", $key); $val = str_replace("t", " ", $val); if ($save_keys){ $content .= $key."t"; } // create line: $content .= (is_array($val)) ? implode("t", $val) : $val; $content .= "n"; } if (file_exists($filepath) && !is_writeable($filepath)){ return false; } if ($fp = fopen($filepath, 'w+')){ fwrite($fp, $content); fclose($fp); } else { return false; } return true; } // // load a tab seperated text file as array // function load_tabbed_file($filepath, $load_keys=false){ $array = array(); if (!file_exists($filepath)){ return $array; } $content = file($filepath); for ($x=0; $x < count($content); $x++){ if (trim($content[$x]) != ''){ $line = explode("t", trim($content[$x])); if ($load_keys){ $key = array_shift($line); $array[$key] = $line; } else { $array[] = $line; } } } return $array; } /* ** Example usage: */ $array = array( 'line1' => array('data-1-1', 'data-1-2', 'data-1-3'), 'line2' => array('data-2-1', 'data-2-2', 'data-2-3'), 'line3' => array('data-3-1', 'data-3-2', 'data-3-3'), 'line4' => 'foobar', 'line5' => 'hello world' ); // save the array to the data.txt file: write_tabbed_file('data.txt', $array, true); /* the data.txt content looks like this: line1 data-1-1 data-1-2 data-1-3 line2 data-2-1 data-2-2 data-2-3 line3 data-3-1 data-3-2 data-3-3 line4 foobar line5 hello world */ // load the saved array: $reloaded_array = load_tabbed_file('data.txt',true); print_r($reloaded_array); // returns the array from above