What am I doing wrong

I have tried to make a small script that will read a txt file and replace certain words with a number and then display the final result.

Its not working as I planned and if anyone know how to do this could I have it create a output.txt file with the all changes in it?

Here is what I have so far.

<?php

$file = './3/test.txt';

$words = array("United Kingdom", "United States", "Canada");
$numbers = array("1", "2", "3");
$content = '$file';
$change = str_replace($words, $numbers, $content);
Print $change;

?>

PHP:

I tried to use a line like this

$phrase = fopen($file, "r");

PHP:

But then I get this displayed on the page

So not sure if it is trying to work or not the txt file is 3.36mb in size

 

crap sorry had the wrong window open please delete this post

 

use

$phrase = fopen($file, "w");

PHP:

instead.

then

$content = $file;

PHP:

(qoute removed),
I hope it helps.

 

I would do:

<?php

$file = './3/test.txt';

$words = array("United Kingdom", "United States", "Canada");
$numbers = array("1", "2", "3");
$content = file_get_contents($file);
$change = str_replace($words, $numbers, $content);
print $change;

?>

PHP:

Many people say that fopen(), then fread() is faster than file_get_contents() but its easier to understand the latter.