explode / split a string

[poe]

i have a string that looks like:

$string = "2005~nyy~75~10;2004~chi~26~18;2003~chi~45~78;2002~bos~24~46;2001~chi~24~56"

i want to split it by the ; character

then split each line by the ~ character,

then take the "nny", "chi", "chi", "bos", "chi"

and put these into an array

then only show unique values

so i get "nny", "chi", "bos"

(even though there are 3 chi, it shows only once)

[bretticus]

Well, it seems to me that if you are just after the 3-letter abbreviations, why not strip out the semi-colons and numbers and then explode off the tilde? You can then just run array_unique on the resulting array and ignore the empty element.

[qest]

I wrote this simple function for a much more complicated problem, but maybe it will be helpful to you. Basically, its a function to explode a string by an array of deliminators (which is exactly what you want). It has the added bonus of sorting the deliminators by length so that long deliminators that contain shorter deliminators don't throw off the function. Anyways, hope this helps.

Note: this function is not the fastest way to do what you want done.

<?php

function powderize($deliminators, $string) {
	function sort_by_length($a, $b){
		$x = strlen($a);
		$y = strlen($b);
		if ($x == $y) {
			return 0;
		}
		return ($x < $y) ? -1 : 1;
	}
	$unique_devider = md5("devider")
	usort($deliminators, 'sort_by_length');
	for ($i = count($deliminators) - 1; $i >= 0; $i --) {
		$delimiter = $deliminators[$i];
		$string = str_replace($deliminators, "$unique_devider", $string);
	}
	$array = explode("$unique_devider", $string);
	return $array;
}

?>

So you could use this by doing something like this:

array_unique(powderize(array(";", "~"), $string));

[poe]

<?php

$string = "2005~nyy~75~10;2004~chi~26~18;2003~chi~45~78;2002~bos~24~46;2001~chi~24~56";

function powderize($deliminators, $string) {
function sort_by_length($a, $b){
$x = strlen($a);
$y = strlen($b);
if ($x == $y) {
return 0;
}
return ($x < $y) ? -1 : 1;
}
$unique_devider = md5("devider");
usort($deliminators, 'sort_by_length');
for ($i = count($deliminators) - 1; $i >= 0; $i --) {
$delimiter = $deliminators[$i];
$string = str_replace($deliminators, "$unique_devider", $string);
}
$array = explode("$unique_devider", $string);
return $array;
}

array_unique(powderize(array(";", "~"), $string));

?>

so if i go:

echo array_unique(powderize(array(";", "~"), $string));

i get Array ???

how do i get it to print what i want.

[bretticus]

well, if you simply want to see the array structure try print_r(array_unique(powderize(array(";", "~"), $string)));

If you want someone to show you how to use an array, you should cuddle up to the manual.

[DeadlySin3]

Shameless self plug: If you want, you can see exactly what arrays are and how to manipulate them here: array.tut