Convert 2-digit number to three-letter month

bunner_bob

Any simple(ish) way to convert a 2-digit number (between 01 and 12) to the appropriate 3-letter month abbreviation (Jan, Feb, Mar, etc.)? I'm not pulling this out of a date stamp or anything, just starting with a raw number.

Thanks!

Damien_Buttler

You could put them in an array. eg.

$date[] = "";
$date[] = "Jan";
$date[] = "feb";
$date[] = "Mar";
etc...

then use:

$day = $date[02];

would equal 'Feb'.

Damien.

bunner_bob

I'm trying to be lazier - like using some handy PHP function that might say

three_letter_month($i) - where $i is the 2-digit number.

Just wondering if one of the date functions will do this.

But I came up with this (crude but effective) option:

$j = 2492000;
echo "<select name=\"whatever\">";
for ($i=1; $i <= 12; $i++) {
echo "<option value=\"" . sprintf("%02d", $i) . "\"";
echo ">" . date("M", $j) . "</option>";
$j=$j+2592000;
}
echo "</select>";

which gives me a popup menu with the twelve months in it, and transmits 01-12. The $j variable adds 30 days each time through the loop, so as long as the initial value for $j is somewhere in January it seems to work.

Damien_Buttler

I thought my way was lazy enough. But I know what you mean. I did check the date() function to see if that could be done. I don't think there is an easy way out.

Damien.

Weedpacket

Damien Butler's is probably the laziest. doing it with one statement:

$months = array(
 '01'=>'Jan',
 '02'=>'Feb',
...
 '12'=>'Dec',
);

To make the dropdown with this array:

foreach($months as $number=>$word)
{ echo "<option value='$number'>$word</option>";
}

steved

You could use the mktime function to do what you want.

for ($i=1;$i<=12;$i++) {
$three_letter = date ("M", mktime(0,0,0,$i,1,2003));
echo $three_letter . "<br>";
}

Weedpacket

I still don't see how that could be said to be "lazier" than just writing the array - why call entire date/time functions a dozen times every time you want to display something that is pretty much fixed? It's more work for the server and more complicated to write.

bunner_bob

Thanks Weedpacket - your method works great.

I needed to do it as a loop, and on each trip through the loop compare the numerical value of the month to a session variable, and if they matched echo "selected". And this did it!