Re: question on text file reading.

On Wed, Feb 26, 2003 at 08:58:43AM -0800, Chris Shiflett wrote: > --- David Banning <david@skytracker.ca> wrote: > > The company I am working with is using an old database, which > > doesn't even support memo field beyond 256 characters, so it is probably > > too difficult, and not worth trying to interface the database with php. > > > > I was wondering how easy it would be to have php access the database > > via SQL. The data we are looking for is accessible via SQL. > > I think you are confused about what SQL is. > What you need to access a database is some sort of library (driver) that > translates your SQL statements into something specific to the database you are > interacting with. I may be confusing -some- terms, but I know my system. In my case, I have a program, which is called SQL and -also- a language, which is also called SQL. I just put the SQL query in a file, and then execute the SQL query file with the SQL program. Like I mentioned, like this; $ SQL sqlqueryfile and the result spools to the screen. None of this matters to the question I ask, I see now, in hindsite. What I really want to ask is, is it possible for php to execute a shell command, and then have the results of that command be read by php, decoded, separated and displayed as separate fields? The result of my command; $ SQL sqlqueryfile might simply be "Frank" |100.00 |1 "John" |145.00 |2 "Dave" |321.56 |3 If php executed a command that normally send this result to the screen, could php read the result and display each field as separate entities? > For performance, you always want to try to use a native driver, but in your > case, you might be restricted to something like ODBC. SQL is just a query > language. This database predates ODBC by many years. thanks for your response -