Duplicated entries

[dave358]

Hello everyone,
I'm a newbe and working on this quiz program.
I have this six field forum that a user fills out.

question, correct answer, required incorrect answer
which is required.

optional answer1, optional answer1, optional answer1
which is optional and can be left blank.

Proccess Forum
$create_question // The question text submitted
$create_correct // The required correct answer text submitted
$create_required // The required incorrect answer submitted
$optional_1 // An optional incorrect answer (if not blank)
$optional_2 // An optional incorrect answer (if not blank)
$optional_3 // An optional incorrect answer (if not blank)

If any two or more of the above variables has the same value.
e.g. $create_question =phpbuilder & $optional_2 =phpbuilder
I'll like to display the message.
"You have two or more of the same values in the fields.
<a href"'blahblah''> BACK</A>"
and exit the database insert.

The rows (question,answers) cannot be unique.since the same value(s) may be
submitted in another forum.

my question is:
is there an array of some sort that i can use to match all 6 values
at one time.
and display the message
without having to do the if's
e.g.
if ($optional_2 ==$optional_3)
{
message_duplicate();
}
if ($optional_1 ==$optional_3)
{
message_duplicate();
}
and so on..........

any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
Dave

[dalecosp]

Well, you might hack something up with count() and [man]array_unique/man:

<?php
$foo=array(1,2,3,4,5,5);
$bar=array_unique($foo);

if (count($foo) != count($bar)) {
   echo "Dupes found!";
}
?>

Probably someone else can be more elegant....

[Jack_McSlay]

the above idea seems viable, but I think the ideal would be to tell the user what is wrong, so i'd suggest something using in_array()

$arr['create_question'] = $_POST['create_question'];
$arr['create_correct'] = $_POST['create_correct'];
$arr['create_required'] = $_POST['create_required'];
$arr['optional_1'] = $_POST['optional_1'];
$arr['optional_2'] = $_POST['optional_2'];
$arr['optional_3'] = $_POST['optional_3'];

$dup = array();

foreach ($arr as $key=>$value){
    $arr2 = $arr;
    unset ($arr2[$key]);
    if (in_array ($value,$arr2)) $dup[]=$key;
}

with this you should have $dup as an array with all the values that have duplicates. if there isnt any, it'll be an empty array.

[dave358]

Thanks Dale and Jack
I'll give it a try and respond back soon.