Interesting string theory

Kailan

Hey guys..
This site has saved me on more than one occasion from losing all my hair, but this problem might just make me bald..

I'm trying to take a string from the URL and parse it to remove a leading number and '/' and i'm losing my mind!
to start with i've got to test to see if its actually in the string first, then if it is remove it. I've tried preg_match and got truely stuck..
bascially what i'm trying to look for is a string like:

5/page.php

and remove the number and / off the front but if the string shows:

page.php

to leave it alone..

any help?
Thanks!

Kai

bradgrafelman

preg_replace('@^[0-9]+/@', '', $string);

But then again, there may be a better way of doing it... are you just trying to get the value of the file portion (e.g. basename) of the path?

If so, just use [man]basename/man or look at [man]pathinfo/man.

Kailan

Well, i've ideally got to trim the existing string down to remove the number and slash if its there leaving the rest alone.. from what i can see in the scripts, its only ever one number and one slash but the number could end up as 2 digits e.g. 1 thru 12.. so this is why i'm scratching my head like mad to figure a way to find the slash if its in the string, and then remove all upto and including the slash and nothing beyond..

Kai

halojoy

bradgrafelman's code
will remove 1 or more number and the slash
+ ... in regex means 1 or more chars, in this case [0-9]

Kailan

So with that code, would i be able to use the preg_match to see if its there with the same expression? e.g.:

if(preg_match('@^[0-9]+/@',$string){
 $string = preg_replace('@^[0-9]+/@', '', $string);
}

or would that bork??

Kai

bradgrafelman

There's no need to use preg_match() first - just do the preg_replace and that's it.

Kailan

Well that script does as it should.. but the error i get still remains.. This is what comes of trying to fix someone elses code who never comments and just hacks things together.. lol
Stupid thing is, i've got two really wierd errors on the site that i can't solve and i can't sign off on the project till they are set :queasy::glare:
After putting in now over 80 hours on this script to get it to where its at, i'm really loathed to re-code from scratch and waste another 80-100 hours doing so and trying to figure out ways to do it.. lol

Oh well.. I think i'd better think it through again..

Kai

NogDog

I don't know if this helps since it sounds like you have other problems, but...

$str = "5/index.php";
$str = basename($str);
echo $str;