HELP with creating a function

123

I am writing code that randomly selects a word from one text file and then another word from another text file and puts those words together to make a sentence.

The code below is what i have done so far and it works fine.

My problem is that i want to be able to expand this code so that eventually it selects up to 20 words or more but i want to avoid repeating the same code again and aganin with only minor changes.
I figured a function that can be called many times to generate values for the $result variable will be the best way to do this but i have not successfully been able to write one.

Help please????

<?php
$word1 = file('words/first_word/choice1.txt');

$n = count($word1);

$random1 = rand(0, ($n - 1));

$word2 = file('words/second_word/choice2.txt');

$n = count($word2);

$random2 = rand(0, ($n - 1));

$results = ('<p>' . $word1[$random1] .' '. $word2[$random2] '</p>');

wilku

Functions and loops are what you need

function RandomLine($file)
{
//the code for reading the file and choosing random line
   $word = file($file);
   $n = count($word);
   $random = rand(0, ($n - 1));
   return $word[$random];
}
//list files that are supposed to have words
$words = array('/path/to/file1','/path/to/file2');
//first let's create empty sentence
$sentence="";
//simple foreach loop
foreach ($words as $word)
     $sentence.=RandomLine($word).' ';

laserlight

Incidentally, this code snippet:

$n = count($word);
$random = rand(0, ($n - 1));
return $word[$random];

can be simplified to:

return $word[array_rand($word)];

123

Hi
Thanks a lot for your help.

Is there a way i can name the $word variable every time i call the function. so that for every time the function is called it will return a variable with the variable name i have given it.

Hope this makes sense

Thanks alot

laserlight

Is there a way i can name the $word variable every time i call the function. so that for every time the function is called it will return a variable with the variable name i have given it.

Hope this makes sense

It doesn't :p

Functions return values (or in some cases, references). You can then assign this value to a variable of whatever name you want.

123

ok thanks that was helpful

I can just rename the $word variable once it has been returned from the function

Silly me

Thanks