What are some best practices for efficiently checking if an IP address already exists in a file in PHP?

When checking if an IP address already exists in a file in PHP, one efficient approach is to read the file line by line and compare each line to the target IP address. This can be done using a loop with functions like `fgets()` and `strpos()`. Another option is to load the file into an array using `file()` and then use `in_array()` to check for the IP address. Both methods can help efficiently determine if the IP address already exists in the file.

$ip_address = '192.168.1.1';
$file_path = 'ip_addresses.txt';

$exists = false;
$handle = fopen($file_path, 'r');

while (($line = fgets($handle)) !== false) {
    if (strpos($line, $ip_address) !== false) {
        $exists = true;
        break;
    }
}

fclose($handle);

if ($exists) {
    echo 'IP address already exists in the file.';
} else {
    echo 'IP address does not exist in the file.';
}