Reading a CSV in PHP is much easier than I anticipated with the advent of the fgetcsv() function for PHP 4. The function basically reads a file line by line and performs and explode on the delimiter, returning the array. Here’s some sample code:

$length = 0;

if ( ($handle = @fopen($file, "r")) !== FALSE )
{
	while (($row = fgetcsv($handle, $length, "\t")) !== FALSE) 
	{
		var_dump($row);	//dumps an array corresponding 
	}
}

The length parameter is option as of PHP 5.0.4. Using a limited line length makes execution slightly faster, so if it is realistic to limit line length (even if limiting it at a great value) it could improve script execution time significantly.

The function also allows for setting the enclosure and escape characters.