Are there alternative functions or methods in PHP that can handle larger file outputs without losing formatting?

When dealing with large file outputs in PHP, the `readfile()` function may not be the best choice as it reads the entire file into memory before outputting it, potentially causing memory issues with large files. An alternative approach is to use `fpassthru()` function which reads and outputs file chunks without loading the entire file into memory, making it more memory efficient for large files. 

$file = 'large_file.txt';

if (file_exists($file)) {
    $handle = fopen($file, 'rb');
    if ($handle) {
        header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
        header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="' . basename($file) . '"');
        while (!feof($handle)) {
            echo fread($handle, 8192);
        }
        fclose($handle);
    }
}

Keywords

PHP file handling large files output formatting alternative functions

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