Why would echoing an nbsp make a difference? (PHP)

Question

I have a script which opens a file then prints its contents (for a long, silly reason that doesn't bear explaining). The issue i have is, it often refuses to work, unless i echo some other text first. The code below doesn't work, but if i put echo "a"; or echo " "; first, it does. Even more strange, echo " "; is insufficient.

What does echoing some text do?

//...a bunch of code to get the file name
if(file_exists($file))
    {
        $fp=fopen($file, "r");
        $temp = fread( $fp, filesize($file));
        echo $temp;
    } 
else 
    { 
    echo $file." not found<br /><br />";
    }

Does it work if you use file_get_contents instead of fopen and fread? — Will Warren, May 10 '12 at 21:16
Try http://php.net/manual/en/function.flush.php. What is the size of the file? I have had issues like this for < 4K of output data. — mellamokb, May 10 '12 at 21:16
Use [`readfile()`](http://php.net/manual/en/function.readfile.php) instead of `fread(fopen())`. — Francis Avila, May 10 '12 at 21:18

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 10 '12 at 21:21

0

$filelen = @readfile($file);
if ($filelen===FALSE) {
    echo "{$file} not found <br /><br />";
}

answered May 10 '12 at 21:21

Francis Avila

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Thanks for your suggestions everyone, but i'm afraid neither ob_flush(), flush() or readfile() solved my issue. I've put a kludge in for the moment. given that my whole solution is one giant kludge i don't feel too bad about a little one... – Dylan May 11 '12 at 13:32

Why would echoing an nbsp make a difference? (PHP)

1 Answers1