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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-12T08:47:19+00:00

I’d like to store 0 to ~5000 IP addresses in a plain text file,

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I’d like to store 0 to ~5000 IP addresses in a plain text file, with an unrelated header at the top. Something like this:

Unrelated data
Unrelated data
----SEPARATOR----
1.2.3.4
5.6.7.8
9.1.2.3

Now I’d like to find if ‘5.6.7.8’ is in that text file using PHP. I’ve only ever loaded an entire file and processed it in memory, but I wondered if there was a more efficient way of searching a text file in PHP. I only need a true/false if it’s there.

Could anyone shed any light? Or would I be stuck with loading in the whole file first?

Thanks in advance!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    5000 isn’t a lot of records. You could easily do this:

    $addresses = explode("\n", file_get_contents('filename.txt'));

    and search it manually and it’ll be quick.

    If you were storing a lot more I would suggest storing them in a database, which is designed for that kind of thing. But for 5000 I think the full load plus brute force search is fine.

    Don’t optimize a problem until you have a problem. There’s no point needlessly overcomplicating your solution.

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