PHP & Parsing Text Files

I'm new to PHP. I'm working on a PHP script to submit faxes via HylaFax. I discussed the issue with my employers web developer and he seems to think that PHP has issues reading and parsing text files (such as a comma-seperated CSV file containg fax numbers). The goal of the PHP script is to allow people to submit faxes using a CSV file from their computer rather than a MySQL database. Are there any functions that will support parsing CSV files and inserting the parsed fields that get passed to the console (I'm using the shell_exec() statements to run sendfax)?