input record separator

PHP equivalent of PERL's $/

[ktsirig]

Hi all!
I have written some scripts in Perl, where I make use of the $/ ,the input record separator.
My question is whether such a thing exists also in PHP, and, if so, how can I separate multiple records in a text file, that are separated (let's say by //).

In Perl I write: $/="//";

In PHP?

[lobo235]

I typically do this with regular expressions or the explode() function in php.