Making datestring

[sidsel]

I have some filenames which are named '123-20080327165347-01.jpg'

What is the easiest way to make a readable date & time out of the middlepart (20080327165347) without using substring for each date/time element?

[laserlight]

You could use [man]preg_match/man, e.g.,

<?php
$filename = '123-20080327165347-01.jpg';

$pattern = '/\d+-(\d{4})(\d\d)(\d\d)(\d\d)(\d\d)(\d\d)-\d+\.jpg/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $filename, $matches)) {
    echo $matches[3] . '/' . $matches[2] . '/' . $matches[1] . ' '
       . $matches[4] . ':' . $matches[5] . ':' . $matches[6];
} else {
    echo 'Invalid format!';
}
?>

Though substr() still sounds reasonable to me.

[Weedpacket]

Or [man]sscanf[/man].