How to Output Escape Characters to File in PHP

When you are writing to a file with PHP, you sometimes need to output special characters to the file. For example, if you want to insert a new line in a data file, you have to output a carriage-return character and a line-feed character to the file. Because these are not printable characters, you have to use special escape characters to represent them in the file. An escape character is a combination of the forward-slash character and a character abbreviation.

Instructions

1. Create a new PHP program file using an editor. For example, type:

   nano escapeout.php

2. Open a file in write mode. For example, type:

   <?php

   $fh = fopen("output.dat", "w");

   if (!$fh) die("Could not open output file!");

3. Create a variable to store the data you want to write to the file. Add the carriage-return escape character "\r" and the new-line escape character "\n" to the variable. For example, type:

   $output = "This is the output string for the file\r\n";

4. Write the data to the file and close the file. For example, type:

   fputs($fh, $output);

   fclose($fh);

   ?>

5. Exit the editor and save the file. Navigate to the file in a browser to run it and test the program's functionality.

References

• PHP: Escape Sequences