Any idea how to do this?

[kulet]

Hi guys! Got stuck with this..
I have a chunks of text separated with blanc line. All I need is to
take every last 3 lines of that text before the blanc line and put it
in to the new text file: example:

1some text
2some text
3some text
4some text
5some text

6some text
7some text
8some text
9some text
10some text

11some text
12some text
13some text
14some text
15some text

End result mast be...

3some text
4some text
5some text
8some text
9some text
10some text
13some text
14some text
15some text

Any idea?

[Erwin Moller]

kulet wrote:

Hi guys! Got stuck with this..
I have a chunks of text separated with blanc line. All I need is to
take every last 3 lines of that text before the blanc line and put it
in to the new text file: example:

1some text
2some text
3some text
4some text
5some text

6some text
7some text
8some text
9some text
10some text

11some text
12some text
13some text
14some text
15some text

End result mast be...

3some text
4some text
5some text
8some text
9some text
10some text
13some text
14some text
15some text

Any idea?

Hi,

That is easy. You must replace all double newlines with 1 newline.
But beware: you say 'blanc line', but you must first find out how that is
coded in your file.

Often a newline is \n but sometimes it is \n\f or something like that.
(\f for linefeed)
It is also implemented differently on Unix, Windows, and Mac, just to make
your life misserable.

So you need something like this:
$newLineOnMySystem = "\n";
$yourString = "sometextsometextetcetc";

// Now replace all double occurences with single ones.
$yourString = str_replace($newLineOnMySystem.$newLineOnMySystem ,
$newLineOnMySystem, $yourString);

Read more here about string replacement:
http://nl3.php.net/manual/en/function.str-replace.php

But first find out what character(s) define newline on your system.

If uncertain try this:
You can use the function ord() to get the ascii value of a character.
Just print them out once for all characters in your file, and see what your
newline is.
More here:
http://nl3.php.net/manual/en/function.ord.php
Regards,
Erwin Moller

[kulet]

Yes, But how do i get those last 3 lines before the blanc line???

[Erwin Moller]

kulet wrote:

Yes, But how do i get those last 3 lines before the blanc line???

Oh, I assumed, without any valid reason, that you only had 2 newlines.

The poor mans solution would be to do both:
\n\n\n -\n
and
\n\n -\n

But then again you come here and ask how to do 4 lines, right? ;-)

That can be solved easily by doing something more smarter, eg write a simple
program that scans for repetive \n and replace them with one \n, only using
basic stringfunctions.

But much easier would be to use a regular expression that can recognize any
number of repeated \n.

Use a function like preg_replace(), read more here:
http://nl3.php.net/manual/en/function.preg-replace.php

Regards,
Erwin Moller