Finding Variables

zoomba

I kow this is a bit of a cludgy situation and there are much more elegant ways to organize data, but this is a leftover from an older program I'm helping someone convert all their content from...

What I have is a LONG list of variables all containing either paragraphs of text or images. They're named in a manner similar to this:

$fred1 = '....';
$fred2 = '....';
$fred3 = '....';
$fredImg1 = '....';
$fredImg2 = '....';

$Joe1 = '....';
$Joe2 = '....';
$Joe3 = '....';
$JoeImg1 = '....';
$JoeImg2 = '....';

And so on....

What I'm trying to figure out is how to write something that will look at that massive list of variables and ONLY select out 'fred' variables for instance. I can't figure out a simple way of doing it in a simple manner.

Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks,
-Mike

tsinka

Hi,

what about using arrays instead ? Like

$fred = array('....','....','....');
$fredImg = array('....','....');
$Joe = array('....','....','....');
$JoeImg = array('....','....');

This would ease up things a lot.

Another way:

for ($i=1;$i<3;$i++) {
if (isset(${"fred".$i})) {
echo ${"fred".$i};
}
}

Thomas

zoomba

Like I said, I know it's a bad way to be storing the information, but we're dealing with some odd legacy stuff here.

The for loop checking for set variables is pretty good... Is there a way to have it know when to stop? Like fred3 exists but it's the last fred variable so it shouldn't keep searching after that.

Thanks,
-Mike

tsinka

Hi,

if the variable names are strictly

$var1 $var2 $var3 $var4
and not
$var1 $var3 $var5 $var100

you can do something like e.g.:

$i=1;
while (isset(${"var".$i})){
  echo ${"var".$i}."<br>\n";
  $i++;
}