PHP Exercises : Count number of lines in a file

Last update on April 19 2025 11:50:50 (UTC/GMT +8 hours)

16. Count Lines in File

Write a PHP script to count number of lines in a file.

Note : Store a text file name into a variable and count the number of lines of text it has.

Sample Solution:

PHP Code:

<?php
// Get the base name of the current PHP script file
$file = basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']); 

// Count the number of lines in the current PHP script file
$no_of_lines = count(file($file)); 

// Display the result indicating the number of lines in the file
echo "There are $no_of_lines lines in $file"."\n";
?>

Explanation:

• Get Current File Name:
• basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']) retrieves the file name of the current PHP script and stores it in $file.
• Count Lines in File:
• file($file) reads all lines of the file into an array, where each array element represents one line.
• count() then counts the number of elements (lines) in this array, storing the result in $no_of_lines.
• Display Line Count:
• The echo statement outputs the number of lines in the current file with a message, like "There are 5 lines in script.php."

Output:

There are 5 lines in a6924e70-5a4c-11e7-b47b-99347412a245.php

Flowchart:

basename() function: The basename(path,suffix) function is used to get the filename from a path.

count() function: The count() function is used to count the elements of an array or the properties of an object.

Note: For objects, if you have SPL installed, you can hook into count() by implementing interface Countable. The interface has exactly one method, Countable::count(), which returns the return value for the count() function.

For more Practice: Solve these Related Problems:

• Write a PHP script to count and display the number of non-empty lines in a given text file.
• Write a PHP script to compare the line counts of two files and output the difference.
• Write a PHP script to process multiple files and generate a summary report of their line counts.
• Write a PHP script to count lines in a file and highlight any line that exceeds a specific character length.

PHP Code Editor:

Have another way to solve this solution? Contribute your code (and comments) through Disqus.

Previous: Write a PHP script to get last modified information of a file.
Next: Write a PHP script to print current PHP version.