Converting a string of characters.....

[sgtpepper]

I have two tables in a DB. One called 'residential' and one called 'featured'.

A field called 'features' in the residential table is returned in a string of up to 255 chars.

Each feature code is 3 chars long and starts with a letter A-Z and is followed by a number 01-99. A typical feature string would be A01B03B05C02.....

I need to somehow use the 'features table' to convert the residential table features field properly so that the results display properly. The Features convert a code "A01" to words "Bed & Breakfast".

The features table has two fields and looks like this....

code long_name
A01 Bed and Breakfast
B03 Diner
B05 ham sandwich
C02 minime

So, I guess....my question is.....(man, this is hard to explain).

How can a string in the 'features' field in 'residential' table that looks like this:
A01B03B05C02
Give me results like this
Bed and BreakfastDinerHam Sandwichminime

[laserlight]

This might work, though personally it is rather inefficient.
Still, I presume you intend to do the conversion only once?

<?php
//let's get the info from the features table
$query = db_query("SELECT code, long_name FROM features");
//now we create an array with the features
$codes = array();
$names = array();
while ($row = db_fetch_array($query)) {
	$codes[] = $row['code'];
	$names[] = $row['long_name'];
}
//ok, now we work on the residential data
$query = db_query("SELECT id, features FROM residential");
$features = array();
$ids = array();
while ($row = db_fetch_array($query)) {
	$ids[] = $row['id'];
	$features[] = str_replace($codes, $names, $row['features']);
}
//now we update the DB with the altered data
$size = count($residential);
for ($i = 0; $i < $size; $i++) {
	db_query("UPDATE residential SET features='" . $features[$i] . "' WHERE id='" . $ids[$i] . "'");
}

incidentally, I'm basing db_query() on mysql_query() and db_fetch_array() on mysql_fetch_array() or mysql_fetch_assoc()

You may have to change the code as needed.