PHP - File Close

The next logical step after you have opened a file and finished your business with it is to close that file down. You don't want an open file running around on your server taking up resources and causing mischief!

PHP - File Close Description

In PHP it is not system critical to close all your files after using them because the server will close all files after the PHP code finishes execution. However the programmer is still free to make mistakes (i.e. editing a file that you accidentally forgot to close). You should close all files after you have finished with them because it's a good programming practice and because we told you to!

PHP - File Close Function

In a previous tutorial, we had a call to the function fclose to close down a file after we were done with it. Here we will repeat that example and discuss the importance of closing a file.

PHP Code:

$ourFileName = "testFile.txt";
$ourFileHandle = fopen($ourFileName, 'w') or die("can't open file");
fclose($ourFileHandle);

The function fclose requires the file handle that we want to close down. In our example we set our variable "$fileHandle" equal to the file handle returned by the fopen function.
After a file has been closed down with fclose it is impossible to read, write or append to that file unless it is once more opened up with the fopen function.

Posted in: PHP