For C/C++ programmers.

fscanf() does not work like C/C++, because PHP's fscanf() move file pointer the next line implicitly.

It would be great to precise in the fscanf documentation
that one call to the function, reads a complete line.
and not just the number of values defined in the format.

If a text file contains 2 lines each containing 4 integer values,
reading the file with 8 fscanf($fd,"%d",$v) doesnt run !
You have to make 2 
fscanf($fd,"%d %d %d %d",$v1,$v2,$v3,$v4);

Then 1 fscanf per line.

If you want to read text files in csv format or the like(no matter what character the fields are separated with), you should use fgetcsv() instead. When a text for a field is blank, fscanf() may skip it and fill it with the next text, whereas fgetcsv() correctly regards it as a blank field.

Yet another function to read a file and return a record/string by a delimiter.  It is very much like fgets() with the delimiter being an additional parameter.  Works great across multiple lines.

function fgetd(&$rFile, $sDelim, $iBuffer=1024) {
    $sRecord = '';
    while(!feof($rFile)) {
        $iPos = strpos($sRecord, $sDelim);
        if ($iPos === false) {
            $sRecord .= fread($rFile, $iBuffer);
        } else {
            fseek($rFile, 0-strlen($sRecord)+$iPos+strlen($sDelim), SEEK_CUR);
            return substr($sRecord, 0, $iPos);
        }
    }
    return false;
}

If you want to parse a cron file, you may use this pattern:

<?php

while ($cron = fscanf($fp, "%s %s %s %s %s %[^\n]s"))
{

}

?>

to include all type of visible chars you should try:

<?php fscanf($file_handler,"%[ -~]"); ?>

actually, instead of trying to think of every character that might be in your file, excluding the delimiter would be much easier.

for example, if your delimiter was a comma use:

%[^,]

instead of:

%[a-zA-Z0-9.| ... ]

Just make sure to use %[^,\n] on your last entry so you don't include the newline.