Reading Standard Input in PHP

While PHP is commonly used for web development, it's also a general-purpose scripting language. One aspect that may be less familiar is the possibility of reading input from standard input (stdin). This article explores how to achieve this in PHP, particularly using the fgetc() function.

In PHP, standard output is generally available through functions such as print and echo. However, to read from stdin, we must create a file handle and then use the fgets() function for line input or fgetc() for character input.

The following script demonstrates how to read from stdin using PHP:

This script opens a file handle to stdin using fopen('php://stdin', 'r'). The fgets() function is then employed to read lines from stdin, and each line is echoed to the standard output.

By following these steps, you can easily read standard input in PHP, expanding its functionality beyond web development into general-purpose scripting scenarios.