Reg Exp Help

BenSeb

I've got some strings that we need to split to enter into a database.

C 1639, 1664, 1690-1877 M 1639, 1664, 1690-1840 B 1639, 1664, 1690-1877 copy BT mf MF 3/1

The format is:

Letter showing the record type (eg C = christening, M = marriage, copy BT = copy of bt)

followed by the years this info is available

Then 'mf' or similar to show the type of storage (eg mf or pr(

followed by a code for the location - eg MF 3/1

so from the above I would need...

Type | Start | End | Type | Location
C | 1639 | 1639 | mf | MF 3/1
C | 1664 | 1664 | mf | MF 3/1
C | 1690 | 1877 | mf | MF 3/1
M | 1639 | 1639 | mf | MF 3/1
and so on...

Is this going to be possible via regular expressions??? 😕 🙁

cheers

Wynder

Probably.. I think there's a function that lets you read in a string one word at a time. If not, it's easy enough to code. But if your separators are ALWAYS going to be the same, you'd be going word by word checking to see if it's 'C', 'M', or 'copy' (in that case, skip the next word, and reading the data in under that heading till you hit the next keyword.

Just read the post for the results you need. Something else you may want to do it write a function to read the info into an array so $info['C'][0] = 1639 and $info['C'][1] = 1664 -- doing the same for M and the copy..

Then, with $i =0, you have $info['C'][$i] $info['M'][$i] and so forth... then increment $i.

It'll be a pain -- would be better if your data was in a more friendy format, though.