Sum of numbers associated to letters..

r3drain

Hi! First of all.. sorry for my bad english 🙂
However.. this is my problem:

I have 14 values selected from a mysql table's row:
a,b,c,a,c,d,b,c,3,4,2,6,4,1,6

each letter has to be "associated" to numbers in this manner:

a,b,a,c,d,b,c
| | | | | | |
3,4,2,6,4,1,6

After the association, i want to calculate the sum of the numbers "associated" to each letters..
In my example:

(3+2)->(sum of numbers from second array "associated" to "a" from first array)
(4+1)->(sum of numbers from second array "associated" to "b" from first array)
(6+6)->(sum of numbers from second array "associated" to "c" from first array)
(4) (the number associated to "d")

and the output of the php script like this
5a 5b 12c 4d

Is this possible?
I tried with array_count_values() but with no results.. because i'm sure i use the function in the wrong manner.. 🙁

Can somebody help me with this script?

Thks!

diego25

What kind of data structure are you using to store the associations?

Diego

r3drain

Thanks for helping me!

In my opinion your question is the crucial point:

After the user input the values from a form, values are stored in a mysql database and then selected to calculate the sum...

I thought that a good data structure to set the association in php would be an array or a multidimensional array.. like this:

array (
			array (a, b, a, c, d, b, c),
			array (3, 4, 2, 6, 4, 1, 6)
			)

or a simple array like this:

			
array (a =>3, b=>4, a=>2, c=>6, d=>4, b=>1, c=>6)

but in this ways.. i've no idea how to calculate the sum and then group each sum with the respective letter.. i tried with array_count_values() with no luck.. 🙁

Weedpacket

The latter one won't work - one key per value only.

Consider an associative array like

array('a'=>array(3, 2), 'b'=>array(4,1), 'c'=>array(6,6), 'd'=>array(4));

Then the sum of all the 'a' fields is array_sum($whateverthearrayiscalled['a']);

But if these are stored in the database, then it would appear to make more sense to use the database to do these calculations.

r3drain

thks!
Like you said values are stored in database with these field-name:
input1 to input14...
in my example:

input1=a input2=b input3=a input4=c input5=d input6=b input7=c
input8=3 input9=4 input10=2 input11=6 input12=4 input13=1 input14=6

but, if i select values from the table in this way:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT input1, input2, input3, input4, input5, input6, input7, input8, input9, input10, input11, input12, input13, input14 FROM table");

and the result is (a,b,a,c,d,b,c,3,4,2,6,4,1,6)

how can i tell the script to associate letters with each number?
in other words: input1 associated to input8, input2 associates to input9 and so on..

The only way i thought was an array in php like you explained me.. or is there another way with a simple mysql query to the database?

thanks again!