Search for text in a 5GB+ file then get whole line

Question

I want to search for the text Hello (example) in a TXT file whose size is 5GB+ then return the whole line.

I've tried using SplFileObject but what I know is that the line number is required to use SplFileObject, like that:

$linenumber = 2094; 
$file = new SplFileObject('myfile.txt');
$file->seek($linenumber-1);
echo $file->current();

But as previously mentioned, I want to search for a string then get the whole line, I don't know the line number.

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

This is the answer that I can use. Thanks a lot to @user3783243

For Linux:

exec('grep "Hello" myfile.txt', $return);

For Windows:

exec('findstr "Hello" "myfile.txt"', $return);

Now $return should contain the whole line.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work if exec() and system() functions are disabled by your server administrator in the php.ini file. But for me it works fine.

If someone have a better solution I'd be glad to know it :)

Answer 2

this should work:

<?php
$needle = 'hello';
$count = 1;
$handle = fopen("inputfile.txt", "r");
if ($handle) {
    while (($line = fgets($handle)) !== false) {
        // process the line read.
        $pos = strpos($line, $needle);
        if ($pos !== false) {
            echo $line . PHP_EOL;
            echo "in line: ".$count . PHP_EOL;
            break;
        }
        $count++;
    }

    fclose($handle);
} else {
    // error opening the file.
}