Control structure that checks expression in realtime

[scrupul0us]

I'm building a little app that performs multiple types of searches. Each search has its own function.

What I'm trying to do is run them all within one encompassing function however I'm finding it difficult to stop running the searches if one returns results

e.g.

while($results !== FALSE)
{
$results = searchA();
...
$results = searchZ();

}

now if searchR() returns results, the loop keeps going b/c of how the expression checking works with while(). Is there an alternative method that isn't ugly that would be suitable for this?

[bradgrafelman]

Can't you just [man]break[/man] out of the loop as soon as you've found something suitable?

Otherwise, there's probably a way you could restructure the while() loop so that each function is called in succession but only one call occurs in a single iteration, thus allowing you to check for results in the while() condition after every search.

EDIT: Quick 'n' dirty example of what I meant by that last bit:

$funcs = array('searchA', 'searchB', 'searchC', /* ... */ );

for($i = 0, $results = FALSE; $results == FALSE && isset($funcs[$i]); $i++) {
	$results = call_user_func($funcs[$i], 'param1', 'param2');
}

if($results === FALSE) {
	// no results found
} else {
	// result!
}

[scrupul0us]

That works pretty damn sweet...

Not sure exactly sure how you have that for loop setup to accept the extra params but, it works very nice =)

[bradgrafelman]

scrupul0us wrote:

Not sure exactly sure how you have that for loop setup to accept the extra params

You mean the 'param1', 'param2' values? I didn't know what your specific application does, so I just threw those in there for placeholders to show that you can pass extra arguments if needed.

If the parameters are function-specific, you could have even more fun with arrays:

$funcs = array (
    array(
        'func' => 'searchA',
        'params' => array('param1', 'param2')
    ),
    array (
        'func' => 'searchB',
        'params' => array('param3', 'param4')
    ),
    /* etc. */
);

for($i = 0, $results = FALSE; $results == FALSE && isset($funcs[$i]); $i++) { 
    $results = call_user_func_array($funcs[$i]['func'], $funcs[$i]['params']); 
} 

[scrupul0us]

more so:

for($i = 0, $results = FALSE; $results == FALSE && isset($funcs[$i]); $i++)

didn't know you could pass more than 3 options:

iterator seed, condition, iterator increment

[bradgrafelman]

Still only 3 types of expressions above, though I'm utilizing the for() structure like most languages allow you to:

PHP Manual wrote:

Each of the expressions can be empty or contain multiple expressions separated by commas

[scrupul0us]

ahhh yes, i didnt see that comma...

thanks again... I'm always learning something new from you and the usual cohorts that entertain my craziness =)