How can one efficiently search for a tab character in a string when reading it from a file in PHP?

When reading a string from a file in PHP, you can efficiently search for a tab character by using the `strpos()` function to find the position of the tab character within the string. If the tab character is found, the function will return the position of the first occurrence of the tab character, allowing you to handle it accordingly in your code.

$file = fopen("example.txt", "r");
$string = fgets($file);

$tab_position = strpos($string, "\t");

if ($tab_position !== false) {
    echo "Tab character found at position: " . $tab_position;
} else {
    echo "Tab character not found in the string.";
}

fclose($file);