Issue limiting data from files

[azgold]

I have a php file with the following code and i am trying to not display information after todays date. my incl_frontpageschedule.inc is listed below as well. im new to php and think i am close but confused at the moment any help would be great.

<?php
$today = date("F jS");

$filename="incl_frontpageschedule.inc";
$fh=fopen($filename, 'r');
$data=fread($fh, filesize($filename));
fclose($fh);
$splitcontents=explode(",", $data);
foreach ($splitcontents as $CurrentVal)


{
    list($Date, $Name) = explode(',', trim($data) );
    if ($today > $Date)
        {echo $CurrentVal."\n";}
}



PRINT "$today";
?>



This is include file. 
<div id="eventboxhome"> 
<div class="EventDate">May 12th, - big band</div> 
<div class="EventDate">May 19th, - another Band</div> 
<div class="EventDate">June 2nd, - band 3</div> 
<div class="EventDate">June 16th, - band 4</div> 
<div class="EventDate">June 30th, - band 5</div> 
<div class="EventDate">July 14th, - band 6</div> 
<div class="EventDate">July 20th, - band 7</div> 
<div class="EventDate">July 28th, - band 8</div> 
</div>

Also how can i limit it to show only the first 4 events comming up.

The purpose is so i can load a years worth of dates and they will automacally remove them self after the date has past and show the next one on the list.  

[jmichae3]

don't you mean "Y-m-d"? you want the year, instead of 2 dates, don't you? the SQL date format is string comparable. think about it. it has leading zeros. consider comparing 2007-12-01 and 2009-01-31
this kind of format is numerically sortable. because it is, it is also comparable with < and > and other relops.