How do I open a file from line X to line Y in PHP?

Yes, you can do that easily with SplFileObject::seek

$file = new SplFileObject('filename.txt');
$file->seek(1000);
for($i = 0; !$file->eof() && $i < 1000; $i++) {
    echo $file->current(); 
    $file->next();
}

This is a method from the SeekableIterator interface and not to be confused with fseek.

And because SplFileObject is iterable you can do it even easier with a LimitIterator:

$file = new SplFileObject('longFile.txt');
$fileIterator = new LimitIterator($file, 1000, 2000);
foreach($fileIterator as $line) {
    echo $line, PHP_EOL;
}

Again, this is zero-based, so it's line 1001 to 2001.

You not going to be able to read starting from line X because lines can be of arbitrary length. So you will have to read from the start counting the number of lines read to get to line X. For example:

<?php
$f = fopen('sample.txt', 'r');
$lineNo = 0;
$startLine = 3;
$endLine = 6;
while ($line = fgets($f)) {
    $lineNo++;
    if ($lineNo >= $startLine) {
        echo $line;
    }
    if ($lineNo == $endLine) {
        break;
    }
}
fclose($f);