Converting a number into a day name

dcjones

Hi all,

I have a script that gets its data from a serial feed, within the data is code that represents the day i.e

Monday = 1
Tuesday = 2
Wednesday = 3
Thursday = 4
Friday = 5
Saturday = 6
Sunday = 7

I need to convert the day number so I can use the result to create a date based on todays date. So if the incoming data day was "3" I could create the date as 2010-10-13, which is next Wednesday. Can this be done?

bradgrafelman

Should be quite simple, really; simply convert the number to the word (e.g. "3" to "Wednesday" - a numerically-indexed array would suit the job quite well) and then use [man]strtotime/man to get the time of statements such as "next $day" (where $day is the day of the week, e.g. "Wednesday").

dcjones

Hi Brad,

Many thanks for your reply.

I have created the numerically-indexed array:

$dayname = array("1=>","Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday","Friday","Saturday","Sunday");

but then I started to have a thick-o-day, for reasons only known to my brain I did not understand the rest of your reply.

When you say use "strtotime" to get the time of statements, I was and still am completely lost. Could you be so find as to expand on your answer.

bradgrafelman

For one, the code you posted above for the array isn't correct - the 1=> is supposed to define the index, whereas you have it inside of double quotes and thus is being treated as nothing but an array element. Incidentally, that false array element is taking up index #0, so it ends up producing the desired results.

I simply meant that you could use [man]strtotime/man with a string like "next $dayname" to get the time of the next (whatever). You'd then use that time with a function such as [man]date/man to format the date however you'd like.