splitting into an array problem

[markwin]

i have the date in the format

20021102 = yyyymmdd

list ($theday, $daynumber, $months) = split (' [ ]', $Dat);

Dat is the list menu with the items with value of the date.

the way it is above it splits by a space. this worked but i changed my date format to the one above and it no longer works. how would i split the date into the 3 fields now as there are no longer spaces inbetween

i cant change the format of it now. so it must stay like above

yyyymmdd

thanks
mark

[the_Igel]

The easiest way is substr()-splitting:

function splitter($date)
{
$a = array();
$a[] = substr($date, 0, 4);
$a[] = substr($date, 4, 2);
$a[] = substr($date, 6, 2);
return $a;
}

list($year, $month, $day) = splitter($date);

[Weedpacket]

The_Igel's code is certainly easier to understand (which is a very important thing for code to be!), but his "splitter" function (if it checked the format of the string as well) could be carried out by

list($year, $month, $day) = sscanf($date, '%4d%2d%2d');

Although better code (for some value of "better" - in the sense of "safer", perhaps) that I've just noticed would be

if(sscanf($date, '%4d%2d%2d', &$year, &$month, &$day)!=3)
{ // The match failed - $date misformatted
}