regexp question

IWeb

Hello,

I am trying to "parse" strings like this into an array (everything between a comma shall be in a seperate field):

('Myte title, and someting','ST, H.; GRZ G.','0-000-1222-0',1984,'Springer','10-Jan-1999','',10,NULL,'','AP',NULL,'',NULL,'','')

Now there are a few problems:
- sometimes there is a comma between '' that should be ignored: e.g. 'hello, this'
- there are emptry '' that shall not be ignored (they should have an empty field in an array.

e.g. the string above should be saved into an array as this:
field 1: Myte title, and someting
field 2: ST, H.; GRZ G.
field 3: 0-000-1222-0
field 4: 1984
field 5: Springer
field 6: 10-Jan-1999
field 7:
field 8: 10
field 9: NULL
field 10:
field 11: AP
field 12: NULL
field 13:
field 14: NULL
field 15:
field 16:

I have tried to manage this with the split function but I don't get it working.

any help would be highly appreciated.

thanks

dopey

If you're reading the string from a file then you could use fgetcsv()
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.fgetcsv.php

IWeb

thanks but this ignores empty fields like ''.
Also there might be problems with comas between ''s like 'something, is',

dopey

If you are running php >= 4.3.0 you can pass a fourth 'string enclosure' param which tells fgetcsv how strings are enclosed. By default it is by the " (double quote) char, but in your case it's the ' single quote char.

This will then work as you want it to.

Cheers,
Andy

IWeb

thanks.
But it does not work on my machine (PHP 4.1.x).

I have tried it with regexp ("$x[1]" is one line):

split("[',']+|[',]+",$x[1]);

but I don't get it working as I want (empty fields like '' are ignored for instance).

jayant

I had a similar need a few months back.

I had to enclose a piece of text inside anchor tag:
<a href=.....> text </a>

The need was that text should not be already linked. I have not been able to find any effective solution 🙁.

For your case I have two solutions:
1) use [man]explode[/man] fn, in it use -> ',' as splitting string. single quote then comma then single quote.
take care of first and last item in array as they will have paranthesis also

2) to do this, do not use ready made '[man]explode[/man]' or similar fn.

write a new function
in it traverse through the string character by character, make sure you also keep previous character in a variable,
as you traverse keep a count of single quotes ' u r passing
if you encounter a single quote ' that is escaped, dont count it that is if the prev character is \
now whenever you encounter a comma, check if counter of single quote is odd or even, if it is even, split here other wise dont split here
to split you can get the substring and push it into an array.