What is the purpose of using the explode function in PHP when dealing with text files?

When dealing with text files in PHP, the explode function is commonly used to split a string into an array based on a specified delimiter. This is useful for parsing data from text files where information is separated by a specific character, such as commas or spaces. By using explode, you can easily extract individual pieces of data from a text file and work with them individually.

// Read the contents of a text file
$file_contents = file_get_contents('data.txt');

// Split the contents into an array based on new line delimiter
$data_array = explode("\n", $file_contents);

// Loop through the array and process each line
foreach ($data_array as $line) {
    // Process each line of data
    echo $line . "<br>";
}