Stating Variables in external .txt files

Is there any way to store more than variable in an external .txt variable. I am new to PHP so this may be a very stupid question. However, I am learning and fast. The reason that I don't think that it is possible becuase of the way I am reading in text files. At the moment each text file is read and then turned into a variable. The Code: for ($i = 1; $i < $numItems; $i++) { $iCurr = "$i.txt"; if (!$text=fopen("$iCurr", "r")) echo ("file $iCurr does not exist".BR); } elseif ($numItems) { $newsItem = fread($text, 100); ${"newsItem".$i} = "$newsItem"; } } Just doing a simple for loop to continue looping until $i (which is incremented each loop) is == $numItems. I am reading in text files and setting them as the variable $newsItem --- $newsItem = fread($text, 100); --- So it is just reading up to 100 chars of the file. But if I inlcude for example --- $foo = "BAR"; --- then PHP wont recognize this as its own var, but rather just a string in $newsItem (which changes value each loop). Is there anyway I can read in a .txt file and state something like --- $foo = "BAR"; --- and have PHP interpret that as a variable. Hope So. Thanks for anyhelp. Scott.