Drawing a Blank !

Anon

I'm not sure how to put this question, so I'm going to try to make it as "simplistic" as possible.

Assume I have a text box set to hold 5 characters.

The first = A, the second = B, the third = C the fouth = D, and the fifth = E.
(giving you ABCDE)

Is it possible to search for results based on the provided text(data) in the text field by position. * select from dbase where desired = positions 1,2,3 and !=4,5

**or select from dbase where desired = abc and !=d,e

Hope this made atleast some sense 🙂

khaine

There is a way. Just cut the string into an array.

<?
$stringin="ABCDE";
unset($thechars);
for ( $loop=0; $loop<strlen($stringin); $loop++ )
{
$thechars[]=substr($stringin, $loop, 1);
}
?>

This will leave you with an array of the characters in the string. You can then build a query based on the array. i.e.

Select * where field1 like '$thischar[0]' and field2 not like '$thischar[1]';

Mark.

Anon

Ouch, why not just treat the string as an array?

$stringin="ABCDE";

Then $stringin[0]=='A', $stringin[1]=='B', ...

Anon

'Course, you're supposed to use $stringin{0}, $stringin{1}, but I could never see why things have to be made that extra bit confusing.

Anon

I've thought of those concepts, the only problem *my example (abcde) is just that, an example, the actual keys to be put into the "text box" will be anywhere from 7 - 17 characters, which should be unique.

databases will be used to match characters in spacific locations to results, which when combined will give the user a match.

*if you think of Vin explosion, you'll be very close to what's being attempted

Anon

Got it.. thanks for the help..

"substr()"