Description
mixed 
fscanf ( resource handle, string format [, mixed &...] )
     The function fscanf() is similar to
     sscanf(), but it takes its input from a file
     associated with handle and interprets the
     input according to the specified format, which is
     described in the documentation for sprintf(). If only
     two parameters were passed to this function, the values parsed will be
     returned as an array. Otherwise, if optional parameters are passed, the
     function will return the number of assigned values. The optional
     parameters must be passed by reference.
    
     Any whitespace in the format string matches any whitespace in the input
     stream. This means that even a tab \t in the format
     string can match a single space character in the input stream.
    
     
Example 1. fscanf() Example 
<?php $handle = fopen("users.txt", "r"); while ($userinfo = fscanf($handle, "%s\t%s\t%s\n")) {     list ($name, $profession, $countrycode) = $userinfo;     //... do something with the values } fclose($handle); ?>
 |  
  | 
     Example 2. Contents of users.txt javier  argonaut        pe
hiroshi sculptor        jp
robert  slacker us
luigi   florist it  |  
  | 
    Note: 
      Prior to PHP 4.3.0, the maximum number of characters read from
      the file was 512 (or up to the first \n, whichever came first).
      As of PHP 4.3.0 arbitrarily long lines will be read and scanned.
     
     See also fread(), fgets(),
     fgetss(), sscanf(),
     printf(), and sprintf().