Erroneous output with list() and split()

[aksival]

Hi there, I'm having a problem with list() and split(). Here's the scenario:

$lines is an array containing a text file.
Each line in the text file has 19 fields that are delimited by ¦ (chr 166).

I.E.: Line 1 --> field1¦field2¦field3¦field4¦etc...

The problem occurs when the line is split into the variables in the list...for some reason there is an 'Â' character appended to each variable.

Here is the actual line of code I am using:

list($this_jobnumber, 
   $this_customer,
   $this_address1, 
   $this_address2,
   $this_ponumber, 
   $this_buyer,
   $this_partnumber, 
   $this_description,
   $this_rev, $this_qty, 
   $this_lineitem,
   $this_sourceinspection, 
   $this_hirel,
   $this_heatlotnumber, 
   $this_duedate,
   $this_delivered, 
   $this_deliverydate,
   $this_creationdate, 
   $this_notes)
   = split('¦', lines[$i]);

So, instead of $email being '[e-mail]' it becomes '[e-mail]Â'.

I use very similar code for three other pages and I've never had a problem (same delimiter and everything).

Any ideas?

[rehfeld]

maybe when you saved the file things got messed up.

did you save the file in a text editor at some point? the editor may have added things.

[aksival]

Sorry about the horizontal scroll thing...I modified the original post to fix that.

Anyways, I initially checked the file in notepad and it looked clean. I just now opened it in Wordpad (for a second opinion) and I noticed that the characters are indeed in the file.

I have never seen anything like this, but it is definately an annoyance. I know this is only a PHP forum, but does anyone know why this would occur? The only thing I can think of is possibly a VB file-write problem.

Thanks for your help, though.

Cory

[Weedpacket]

Probably, since ¦ is not standard ASCII, it's being escaped as (at a guess) UTF-8 by whatever is generating the file, or some program the file has passed through en route. Any particular reason for that choice of character, as opposed to, say, |? If there is, try adding that extra  to the string you're splitting with.

(Incidentally, is there any reason why you're splitting this out into individual variables instead of an array - depending on what you're doing with them this might make things easier later one. Also, you might want to look at the highlighted tip that appears at the top of the manual page on [man]split[/man].)

[aksival]

Each field in the program is inputted by the user, so it is much less likely for the user to enter '¦' than '|', which would corrupt the order of the fields (the text file is substituting for a database)...I've never had a problem with doing this before, so I am convinced that the Visual Basic-generated text file if "corrupted" by the code to write to the text file.

And typically I split into an array. In this case, it was easier for learning purposes and readability to split into separate variables.

You have some good suggestions...thanks!