Don't use a file, simply use add_option("myhack_extraction_length", '255', '', 'yes');

As from this page http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/add_option

If you must get from file, open the file

$fh = fopen('filename', 'r');

and loop through the lines adding each using the add_option function

while($line = fgets($fh)){

    add_option(...);

}

This will create a new option in the database. then you can use get_option and update_option normally.