Split and Regex

supose we have

$artist = \"Sting, Tracy Chapman, Bob Marley & Sade\"

and we wanna split it in an array

the result of that \"split\" will be the following array:

$art[0] = \"Sting\"
$art[1] = \"Tracy Chapman\"
$art[2] = \"Bob Marley\"
$art[3] = \"Sade\"

in other words split $artist using \", \" (comma and space) or \" & \" (space & and space)

I think that we gotta use the split function
and some regex, the proble that i m not very familiary with any of them.

I use arrays like this userlist:

<userlist.lst>

user1#user2#user3#user4

You can easily load it from file to array using function LoadFromFile (have to code it first {string LoadFromFile ($filename)}):

$users = split ("#", LoadFromFile ("userlist.lst"));

Now I can deal with the users easily with for-function or directly with row number.

for (£i = 0; $i < count ($users); $i++)
if ($users[$i] == $user)
print "User $user found!";

You also save it easily with SaveToFile (have to code it first {void LoadFromFile ($filename, $data)})🙂:

SaveToFile ("userlist.lst", implode ("#", $users));

Now it's on your harddisk on it's original form:

<userlist.lst>

user1#user2#user3#user4

To add new user (item) to your list just use array_push ($users, $newitem) after load-function.

Hope this helps some1 to handle lists and that sort of stuff. Just send mail to me if you have need those FileHandling-functions.

well it s not exactly what i m looking for but this gave me an idea about something else that i m working on thanx

And plz post those function so everybody can enjoy them.

The split and explode functions are clearly explained in the manual. Read it.

Try something like this:

<?php

$varTest = "Sting, Tracy Chapman, Bob Marley & Sade";

/do this just to make sure.
You could just do the variable assignment
instead, but I like to check for conditions.
/

if(ereg(" & ",$varTest)) {

$varTest = ereg_replace(" & ",", ",$varTest);

}

$varArtists = explode(", ",$varTest);

//now make sure it worked.
for($i = 0;$i < count($varArtists);$i++) {

echo($varArtists[$i] . "<br>\n");

}

Its in the manual, but I know how daunting that can be if you've never used the functions before. HTH,

Jim Hawley