multible queries and gets() command

Dear php support ! I’m using the fgets() command in a counter. Basically the counter opens a txt-file gets the information from the previous query (see code below). Later this information will be evaluated and be written back into the txt-file (this is not in the code below). $fn = "qrydata.txt"; if (file_exists($fn)) { /* alte Zahl lesen */ $fp = fopen($fn,"r"); $zahl = fgets($fp,10); $date = fgets($fp,40); fclose($fp); } else If there are only a few queries this code works fine. In the last weeks I had a sharp increase in queries and the script will be called several times between getting the strings from the txt-file and writing a new string back to the txt-file. The gets() method is not only copying the lines out of the txt-file. It actually deletes them out of the txt-file. If a second query opens the file before the new string is written back into the txt-file, the variables are either empty or contain only a part of the string. I don’t want to lock the file since this would enlarge the query time. Is there a command which copies only the strings out of the txt-file (without deleting it) ? Or do you have another idea to solve this problem ? Thank you very much for your help Jan please write me a response to jan-mark.kunberger@web.de