php read large text file log

Question

I have a text log file, about 600 MB.

I want to read it using php and display the data on a html page, but I only need the last 18 lines that were added each time I run the script.

Since its a large file, I can't read it all in then flip the array as I would have hoped. Is their another way?

Answer 1

Use fopen, filesize and fseek to open the file and start reading it only near the end of the file.

Comments on the fseek manual page include full code to read the last X lines of a large file.