Manual:FetchText.php/en

Details
fetchText.php file is a maintenance script to fetch a particular revision text from an old_id.

Usage
Provide a text id (old_id from the text table) followed by a newline, and the script will output a string containing the following in order: The text string itself is *not* followed by newline. You can exit from the script typing.
 * textid
 * length of text (-1 on error = failure to retrieve/unserialize/gunzip/etc)
 * text (may be empty)

Since revisions can be deleted without the actual revision text being removed, this script can also return text, which is no longer associated to any revision at all (may it be a current, historic or deleted revision).