How can a lack of understanding of PHP fundamentals contribute to errors like "Warning: main(): stream does not support seeking"?

When encountering the error "Warning: main(): stream does not support seeking", it typically indicates that the code is trying to perform an operation that is not supported by the stream. This error can occur when attempting to use functions like file_get_contents() on streams that do not support seeking, such as HTTP or FTP streams. To resolve this issue, it is important to understand the fundamentals of PHP streams and choose appropriate functions for the specific stream type being used.

$file = 'http://example.com/file.txt';
$stream = fopen($file, 'r');
if ($stream) {
    $contents = stream_get_contents($stream);
    fclose($stream);
    echo $contents;
} else {
    echo "Failed to open stream.";
}