Using text from a file to point to another file to read - php

Question

Note: I'm sorry if the title was a little unclear couldn't think of another way to put it.
I am making a PHP posting system for a blog like website. I have a file called posts.txt which has information that points to other text files. These other text files have the physical post content in them. I know this is not the best way to do it but for now this is what I'm doing.
A sample of the posts.txt:
posts/topDownShooter.txt
posts/leapMotionSandbox.txt
end
The first two lines point to other text files that contain post content. The last line "end" lets the program know that all the post "pointers" are done
Here is a sample of a post like topDownShooter.txt
programming
Top Down Shooter
The actual post content goes here
end
The first line is a tag for organization. The second line is the title of the post. And the third is the actual content. The last line serves the same purpose.
Here is my PHP code:
I use "<--" for comments
<?php
$posts = "posts/posts.txt"; <--Pointer to the location of the posts.txt
$postsLines = file($posts);
$fetchingPost = TRUE; <--For while loop
$postNumber = 0;
$postPointer; <--In the example of posts.txt this would be the second or third line
$postTag;
$postTitle;
$postContent;
$endCondition = "end";
while ($fetchingPost == TRUE) {
$endOfFile = strcmp($postsLines[$postNumber], $endCondition);
if ($endOfFile == 0) {
$fetchingPost = FALSE;
}
if ($endOfFile <> 0) {
$postPointer[$postNumber] = $postsLines[$postNumber];
$postTag[$postNumber] = file($postPointer[$postNumber]); <--The problem, see below
$postNumber = $postNumber + 1;
}
}
?>
The Problem: It will not let me use a line that I take out of posts.txt as a "pointer" for accessing topDownShooter.txt or anything like that. I thought that the value I was pulling out of posts.txt was a string but it is not. Is there anyway that I can convert this to a string or make it work?
EDIT:
in short:
is there anyway to take something from $postsLines = file("somerandomtxtfile.txt); and make %postsLines[0] a string?

Answer 1

I'm not sure if I understand your question, but I'd try replacing the line by this
$postTag[$postNumber] = file_get_contents($postPointer[$postNumber]);
Answering the question in your edit, you can do that like this:
$postLines = explode(PHP_EOL, file_get_contents("somerandomtxtfile.txt"));