Loading Two Files At Once With Fopen()

[ScrewLooseSalad]

I'm still a little bit new to PHP, and I want to ammend the beginning of a text file, moving the previous content toward the end; reading around online the conensus I seem to be finding is that this is not possible with the functions as they are, so I plan to move the conents of a first 'master' file to a second 'hold' file, so I can then ammend the master file with the conents of the hold file afterward; however I'm not sure if it is possible to open two files at once; using some sample code I found online I hashed together this piece of code:

 

 /*******************/
 /*  WRITE TO FILE  */
 /*******************/
 /*pass master news file to the hold file*/
 flock($fq, LOCK_EX); //lock file
 fseek($fq,0);
 fwrite($fq, $fp, strlen($fp));
 flock($fq, LOCK_UN); //unlock file
 fclose($fq);

 /*generate new news code*/
 $date = date('jS F Y');
 $outputstring = "<p><em class="newsheader">".$header."</em> - ".$date."\t"."<br>".$newsbody."</p><br>";
 flock($fp, LOCK_EX); //lock file
 fseek($fp,0);
 fwrite($fp, $outputstring, strlen($outputstring));
 flock($fp, LOCK_UN); //unlock file
 fclose($fp);
 echo '<p>News write successful</p>';

 

The master file is replaced fine, however, the hold file ends up containing "Resource id #1", is it not possible to hold open two files at once?

[Muddy_Funster]

you don't need a second file, just do it with variables within the script.

[ScrewLooseSalad]

you are quite right, I've ammended the code to use a variable instead;

however, I'm still getting the same error where the file is being overwritten loosing the old text, and the variable that is supposed to contain the old text seems to hold the value "Resource 1"

any idea where I've gone wrong in my code?

 

ammended code:

 

 /*******************/
 /*    OPEN FILE    */
 /*******************/
 /*open master news file*/
 @ $oldnews = fopen('news.txt',r);
 if (!$oldnews)
 {
  echo '<p>News write failed, couldn't open master file for copying</p>';
  exit;
 }

 /*generate new news code*/
 $date = date('jS F Y');
 $outputstring = "<p><em class="newsheader">".$header."</em> - ".$date."\t"."<br>".$newsbody."</p><br>".$oldnews;

 @ $fp = fopen('news.txt',w);
 if (!$fp)
 {
  echo '<p>News write failed, couldn't open master file for overwriting</p>';
  exit;
 }

 /*******************/
 /*  WRITE TO FILE  */
 /*******************/
 flock($fp, LOCK_EX); //lock file
 fseek($fp,0);
 fwrite($fp, $outputstring, strlen($outputstring));
 flock($fp, LOCK_UN); //unlock file
 fclose($fp);
 echo '<p>News write successful</p>';

[Muddy_Funster]

fopen() returns a resource, not the content of the file. you want either file() or, more suted to what you are doing, file_get_contents() for that one.

[ScrewLooseSalad]

thats utterly fantastic!

quickly read up on them and they work like a treat! Thankyou Muddy_Funster