String Insertion

[mavvy]

Hi,

I am creating a shoutbox like message script, which has the message stored in the variable $message.

Now before I process this into my MySQL database, I want to check, if any word in the message has more than 10 characters, if yes, it will insert a " " (space character) after the 10th character of that word.

How could I do this, or any hints which PHP function could do this?

Thanks for any hints or solutions.

Mavvy

[diego25]

Try this:

<?
$message = "a bc defg abcdefghijklmno das dsa";
$message = preg_replace('/(\w{10})(\w*)/', '$1 $2', $message);
print $message;
?>

Diego

[swon]

Another way is this (little bit more code then above, but it works, I guess):

<?
$counter = 10;
$message = "adskfjla askjfalksd asdkaskdfjalskfjla aksjlkasjlkajs";
$message = explode(" ",$message);
foreach($message as $messages)
{
if(strlen($messages) > $counter)
{
$char = substr($messages,$counter);
$messages = explode(substr($messages,$counter),$messages);
$messages = $messages[0]." ".$char.$messages[1];
}
echo "$messages<br>";
}
?>

[mavvy]

hmm somehow it didnt work for me, it still did not cut a 30-character word into three 10-character parts or a 25-character word, into 2 x 10-character and 1 x 5 character

[mavvy]

ok i fugured something out, i found something helpful on php.net

<? 
  function maxlen($input,$len) { 
    $l = -1; 
    $output = ""; 
    for ($i = 0; $i < strlen($input); $i++) { 
      $char = substr($input,$i,1); 
      if ($char != " ") { $l++; } else { $l = -1; } 
      if ($l == $len) { $l = 0; $output .= " "; } 
      $output .= $char; 
    } 
    return($output); 
  }

  $message = "123456789012345678901234567890 12345 1234567 1234 12345678901234567890 123";
  $message = maxlen($message,10);
  echo $message; 
?>

[diego25]

Well, you didn't say anything about that 🙂

Try this

<?
$message = "a bc defg abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghi das dsa";
$message = preg_replace('/(\w{10})/', '$1 ', $message);
print $message;
?>

Diego

[diego25]

Try this:

<?
$message = "123456789012345678901234567890 12345 1234567 1234 12345678901234567890 123";

$start = microtime();
$message = preg_replace('/(\w{10})/', '$1 ', $message);
print microtime() - $start . "\n";

$start = microtime();
$message = maxlen($message,10);
print microtime() - $start . "\n";

function maxlen($input,$len) { 

$l = -1; 

$output = ""; 

for ($i = 0; $i < strlen($input); $i++) { 

  $char = substr($input,$i,1); 

  if ($char != " ") { $l++; } else { $l = -1; } 

  if ($l == $len) { $l = 0; $output .= " "; } 

  $output .= $char; 

} 

return($output); 

  }
?>

This is what I get:

0.00082900000000008
0.001763

So, regular expressions are apparently faster...Less than half the time!

Diego

[mavvy]

http://www.mavvy.com/test.php

there is what the code returns

[mavvy]

okay thanks a lot again 🙂)

[diego25]

Hmm...for some reason the bulletin board is removing one of my backslashes. Anyway, just add a backslash ( i.e. ) before the 'w'.

Diego

[mavvy]

http://www.mavvy.com/test.php

wow, yes now it works, and the code looks much better than mine 🙂 thanks alot for your help Diego 🙂