Splitting a variable

[Reformed]

I have a problem that is probably simple to solve, but I can't think of a way solve it. I have a variable containing a formatted date like this

$date = 08/18/2003

I need to take this varible and break it up into 3 parts like so

$month = 08; $day = 18; $year = 2003;

I need to be able to break the variable up so i can inster each of these values into a row of it's own in my look up table. Is there a php function that could help me do this? I also need to find a way to do the oposite in order to read the data out of the database.

[rpanning]

Try this:

<?php
$date = '08/18/2003';
$date = explode('/',$date);
print($date[0]);   // prints 08
print($date[1]);   // prints 18
print($date[2]);   // prints 2003
?>

After the explode the date variable is now an array.

[Reformed]

Great, that worked perfectly. I didn't realize that explode returned an array. 🙂

[barand]

Try this

$date = '08/18/2003';
list ($month, $day, $year) = explode('/', $date);

As rpanning has demonstrated, explode creates an array.
list() takes an array and puts the elements into the separate variables.

edit: Also, you could use [man]sscanf[/man]

hth