What alternative functions can be used in PHP to output files to the browser instead of readfile()?

If you want to output files to the browser in PHP without using the readfile() function, you can use other functions like file_get_contents() or fopen() along with fread(). These functions allow you to read the contents of a file and output them to the browser. Additionally, you can use the header() function to set the appropriate content type before outputting the file contents. 

$file = 'example.txt';

// Set the appropriate content type
header('Content-Type: text/plain');

// Output file contents using file_get_contents()
echo file_get_contents($file);

// Or using fopen() and fread()
$handle = fopen($file, 'r');
while (!feof($handle)) {
    echo fread($handle, 8192);
}
fclose($handle);

Keywords

fopen fread fwrite fclose header

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