Read row and put contentents into array

cbryan374

I need to read the following from line one of a txt file and make contents between |xxx| it own array so that I can manipulate the data in it.
Any suggestions on how to handle this?

I am now cross eyed!!:eek:😕

dagon

file to read the line then explode() to serperate

$lines = file('FILE');

$out=explode('|',$lines[0]);

print_r($out);

bradgrafelman

Also note that the ending '|' will produce an empty array item. If you want to avoid that, use [man]trim[/man] to remove a '|' character on either end of the string.

halojoy

I wonder about [man]file/man
if there is some newline at the end of each line?
If so and if line ends in one '|' character
it might be neceesary to make a [man]rtrim/man before [man]explode/man

And trim eventual spaces at the beginning/end.

Perhaps

$lines = file('FILE');

$out = explode( '|', trim($lines[0], "\n |") );

print_r( $out );

Weedpacket

[man]fgetcsv[/man] can also be used if you specify '|' as the delimiter character.

cbryan374

Thank you I think I got most of using explode. I do have another question:
I have searched column[3] for value of column[12] and removed it using str_replace.
The values in column[3] were separated by a semicolon, so now I have a whole bunch of semicolons i need to remove. Is there a way to remove all semicolons and replace them with a single -?

a sample of column[3] is :
;;Toys;;Featured Products;;;;;;;;Hot Sellers

halojoy

Hi!

[man]str_replace/man would easy do the job.

When we replace every (";") with an empty string ("")
the result it is the same as Remove All (";")

<?php

$text = ";x;;;;x;;;;x;;;"; //Something with lots and lots of semicolons

$clean_text = str_replace(";", "", $text);

echo $clean_text; // Outputs: 'xxx'

?>

cbryan374

I have tried that, but this is an array with 2,540 rows. So I need to remove all of the ;
and have the outcome be
Toys-Featured Products-Hot Sellers

Any ideas?

halojoy

Toys-Featured Products-Hot Sellers
Whats wrong with semicolon? 😃 Toys;Featured Products;Hot Sellers

Okay here is a try for a solution.
This code should be applied on every each of column[3]
Not to be run on the file or a line,
but only that part of each line called column[3]
or any other column[x] you want to cleanup.

<?php

//But maybe we want to leave one (1) semicolon between words

$text = ";word1;;;;two words;;;word3;;;";
echo '<br />'.$text; //Outputs: ';word1;;;;two words;;;word3;;;'

//remove where there are several ;;; and so
//loop until there is only 1 semicolon left between words
do $text = str_replace(';;', ';', trim($text,';'), $count);
while($count);
echo '<br />'.$text; //Outputs: 'word1;two words;word3'

//Finally we replace remaining semicolon with '-'
$column = str_replace(';', '-', $text);
echo '<br />'.$column; //Outputs: 'word1-two words-word3'

?>

bradgrafelman

Using regular expressions would make it more compact:

$text = preg_replace('/;+/', '-', trim($text, ';'));