If you have a text file that looks like this :

  john|orange|cow
  sam|green|goat
  mick|red|dragon
Each line can magically be an element in the array using the PHP file() 
function, like so :

  $lines = file('info.txt');

  print $lines[0]; // john|orange|cow
  print $lines[1]; // sam|green|goat
  print $lines[2]; // mick|red|dragon

Using explode() will help seperate the lines by the seperator, which in 
this case is a '|' , the following will loop through the text file, 
explode each line and print out the given parts.  We're assuming that 
the text file (info.txt) has this format :

  name|color|animal
  name|color|animal
  name|color|animal

  

In the above, we could replace:

  $p = explode('|', $line);

With:

  list($name, $color, $animal) = explode('|', $line);

To create/define more _friendly_ variables to play with.

Related manual entries are as follows :

  explode -- Split a string by string
    http://www.php.net/manual/function.explode.php

  foreach
    http://www.php.net/manual/control-structures.foreach.php
    http://www.php.net/manual/control-structures.php
  
  file -- Reads entire file into an array
    http://www.php.net/manual/function.file.php

  II. Array Functions
    http://www.php.net/manual/ref.array.php