Get array_keys using a partial match in XML

[xmetal]

Hello all,

I've done quite a bit of googling and searching on here and cannot find a solution for this. Any help you could provide would be extremely welcome. Here's the deal:

• I load an XML file, which needs some number of lines removed from it
• I'm using file() to put each line of this XML into an array
• I need to look through this resulting array and find any lines that contain the partial string "section"
• The starting lines for what I need to remove contain the word "section" in the node, but the exact string will vary each time as there are different attributes depending on the node.

NOW, what I need is to be able to use array_keys with a PARTIAL MATCH so that I can get the line numbers of any and all instances of <section blah blah blah>. As it works now, it looks like you can only use that method to search for complete strings, not partials.

I can't figure out how to match on a pattern and get the line numbers (array_keys). I'm sure there is a way to combine in_array, or a preg_match or something to achieve this but I can't figure it out.

[efficacious]

There are two ways that I see to do this..

first way:
Pull each string in with a loop and give each string its own variable name
or just an index like $variable[0] ect..

run each variable through 'strchr(string,search)' function if it comes back true then it contains your 'section' string..

code from there.

the second way is to use in_array function tied up with regular expression designed to look for 'section' most likely the regualar expression would like something like this:

preg_match(^[0-9][a-z][A-Z]section[0-9][a-z][A-Z]$);

depending on what charcters you'll be using you'll need to adjust it.. i'm not the master of regexes either so I hope that is correct.

hope that helps,
eff

[xmetal]

thanks! Your first method worked a treat. Of course it's quite obvious now that you brought that up. I ended up doing this which got me what I need:

//get the line numbers of each section
$dataArray=file($myfilename);

for ($i=0; $i<count($dataArray); $i++) {
	if (strchr($dataArray[$i],"<section")) {
		array_push($sectionLines, $i);
	}
}

[efficacious]

good glad it helped you out.. remember to mark post resolved! 8)