String handling

[Itzatez]

Hello there, first of all i would like to congratulate you guys for the great job you've been doing.. this site has helped me a lot and lots of times... :)

I'm very newbie to PHP, only started to use this language few days ago, and i have a small answer that i cant seem to find a answer to fullfill my needs...

I have a variable that is a string, which is a group of names divided by ',' and i would like to know if there is a way to extract each name of the string to an array of names or whatever. That variable is given by a query to the database and its like:
name1, name2, name3...... oh and the names between the ',' can have more then one word... :S


Thanks in advance for the help, cya later...

[zlash]

try this:

http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.explod e.php

explode will split a string into an array, using any character that you pass as a delimiter.

[Markus]

Hey, itzatez

have a look at this thread.

:)

post back if you need more assistance.

[Itzatez]

Thanks a lot guys... it worked like a charm!

Again, thanks! :) Good weekend and happy new year...

[t3chn0n3rd]

great your problem is resolved

[Markus]

Thanks a lot guys... it worked like a charm!

Again, thanks! :) Good weekend and happy new year...

Post back whenever you need some help

Happy new year!

[Itzatez]

Ok.. im back again with a new problem...

After using what was suggested before i have now one array with names, and i need to count how many times each name repeats itself and then using that information.

Lets say the first array is (a,b,c,a,d,a,b, e) then, counting the unique elements with array_count_val ues() i get the associative array, which would be ("[a]=>3","[b]=>2","[c]=>1","[d]=>1","[e]=>1)

Using the extract() i can retrieve the numbers associated to each field, but my problem is... At start i dont know what is the content of the inicial array, thus i dont know what the [a], [b], [c], [d] and [e] are.. so how can i retrieve the values that correspond to those fields in the associated array? I mean, i need to use the values associated to the key's but i dont know how... Any help on this would be very appreciated since im a completly n**b at php... :)

Thanks a lot in advance, cya later...

[Markus]

I'm sorry - i can't quite understand.

Explain a little more?

i'm a n!#b too :P

[Itzatez]

ok... so... at the begining i had this string has i spoke in the first post... i dont know the content of the string... i only know that its a bunch of names divided by ','. Using the explode() function i was able to extract into an array all the names.

Now i needed to count how many times the elements repeat themselfs. i used array_count_val ues() function to do it... that returned a associated array with both the names and the quantity associated to them.

Giving the same example that i gave in the post above, lets say the first string was: "a,b,c,a,d,a,b, e"... Using explode() i got an array("a","b"," c","a","d","a", "b","e") where this letters represent the names in the first string. Now... using the array_count_val ues() i got another array with the total numbers of each element, ("[a]=>3","[b]=>2","[c]=>1","[d]=>1","[e]=>1).

Now if the names were a,b,c,d,e i could use those numbers by simply calling the extract() function and using $a, $b, $c, $d or $e.. But the problem is that i dont know what those names are.

So my doubt is...how do i use those values given in the last array if i dont know what the names are... in other words, i have a array with the names and other array with the names, which are variables, and the count of themselfs... but how do i use this to get the value of the count.


Lets say the first array is ("Itzatez","Itz atez"), and the array after array_count_val ues() is ("[Itzatez]=>2")... how do i retreave that "2" if the name can be anything, but in this case is Itzatez...

ufff.... this is hard to explain... :S sorry for this little mess, but english is not my native language, which makes it a bit harder... :D


thanks for the help and pacience mate, cya.

[zlash]

Hello, I think that I understand your problem and here is a way to solve it:

The foreach construction in PHP will travel all the keys and values on it, if you have the array names_count[] you can use:

[PHP]foreach ($names_count as $key => $value)
{
//Code written here will execute once per element on the array
// each time, $key will hold the value of the key and $value the value of...
// the value :P
echo($key . "is repeated" . $value . "times");
}[/PHP]

Hope that it makes sense.