modifying a String (easy q? )

[benthemeek]

Starting string

$aString = "Idle           0   0   1    0     16   0:00:00.000 430:32:21.175  511:17:15.674"

Im a newbie to coding and php.
I want to take above string and put a single pair of </td><td> between each of the text entrees(columns) to get the result shown below. I cant do a str_replace on a space with </td><td> because of the multiple spaces in between some of the columns would give me blank table entress and would screw up the formating. Any ideas how to change the string to the way im talkign about?

Desired result

$aString = "Idle</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>16</td><td>0:00:00.000</td><td>430:32:21.175</td><td>511:17:15.674"

[kilbey1]

This is from the PHP manual under comments:

If you have a line with multiple seperator symbols between elements, for example " ", like this one:

$line = "192.168.68.60   0x1         0x2         00:E0:1E:7F:D5:26     *    eth1"

to get rid of null values while exploding you can do something like this:

$line = preg_replace("/\s+/", " ", $line);
$elements = explode(" ", $out);

Here you replace 1 or more whitespace characters (\s+) with single whitespace character " " (a seperator in this case), and then just explode the whole stuff.

---

Then you'd take it like so....

$pizza = "piece1 piece2 piece3 piece4 piece5 piece6";
$pieces = explode(" ", $pizza);

Check out the Explode function, anyway.

• Eve

[EricC]

This is something I came up with off the top of my head and maybe completely off track.. 😉

$aString = "Idle           0   0   1    0     16   0:00:00.000 430:32:21.175  511:17:15.674";

$tString = preg_split("/\\s+/",$aString);
for ($i=0;$i<count($tString);$i++) {
     $newString .= "<td>$tString[$i]</td>";
}

print "$newString";

Hopefully it'll get you on the right track. I've had to use preg_split before in the past to chunk up large strings for futher manipulation.

Good luck. 🙂

[benthemeek]

Thanks for both of your help I will try it when i get a chance.

[Weedpacket]

I think

$newString = preg_replace('/\s+/', '</td><td>', $aString);

Would do the job quite handily.