omg I'm lacking 7 rep to make comments. This is @Raptor's & @Tomm's comment, since this question still shows up way high in google serps.
He's exactly right. For small files file($file);
is perfectly fine. For large files it's total overkill b/c php arrays eat memory like crazy.
I just ran a tiny test with a *.csv with a file size of ~67mb (1,000,000 lines):
$t = -microtime(1);
$file = '../data/1000k.csv';
$lines = file($file);
echo $lines[999999]
."\n".(memory_get_peak_usage(1)/1024/1024)
."\n".($t+microtime(1));
//227.5
//0.22701287269592
//Process finished with exit code 0
And since noone mentioned it yet, I gave the SplFileObject
a try, which I actually just recently discovered for myself.
$t = -microtime(1);
$file = '../data/1000k.csv';
$spl = new SplFileObject($file);
$spl->seek(999999);
echo $spl->current()
."\n".(memory_get_peak_usage(1)/1024/1024)
."\n".($t+microtime(1));
//0.5
//0.11500692367554
//Process finished with exit code 0
This was on my Win7 desktop so it's not representative for production environment, but still ... quite the difference.