Final Delimeter

[Geoffo]

Hi,

I am very new to this so please bear with me.
I am retrieving values from a database and displaying them followed by a couple of colons, so

while ($item = mysql_fetch_array($items)) {
   $item_fruit = $item["fruitname"];
   echo($item_fruit . " :: ");
		}

will display:

apple :: orange :: pear :: coconut :: strawberry ::

What I would like to do is stop the final pair of colons being output, so my results are:

apple :: orange :: pear :: coconut :: strawberry

Any help you could give to a non-programmer would be very much appreciated.

Many thanks,

Geoffo

[laserlight]

one way would be to check if it is the last row returned, e.g.

$rows = mysql_num_rows($items);
$i = 1;
while ($item = mysql_fetch_array($items)) {
	echo $item["fruitname"];
	if ($i < $rows)
		echo " :: ";
	$i++;
}

not sure if something else would be more efficient though.

[Geoffo]

That's just what I need laserlight.
Simple enough when you look at it! Doh!

Many thanks,

Geoffo

[maxpup979]

The other possible option is just to remove the final 2 characters from the end of the final string with a substr($var,0,-2) --This will be more efficient, simply because you must check the if statement every time through the while loop. However, unless you are dealing with a massive quantity of items, the savings is fairly insignificant

[drawmack]

$rows = mysql_num_rows($items);
$i = 1;
$var = array();
while ($item = mysql_fetch_array($items)) {
    array_push($var,$item["fruitname"]);
    $i++;
} //end while
$var_2 = implode(' :: ',$var);
echo $var_2;

much more efficient then the if statement

[laserlight]

hmm... shouldnt the time savings be negated by the fact that implode() has to loop through the array one more time?

of course the code pertaining to $i should be removed for that particular method.