won't delete

[Anon]

I have sent a variable : \"name\" from flash to this script so that if the name in the variable is the same as one in names.txt it will be deleted. It doesn\'t work!! can anyone tell me what\'s wrong with it please

<?php

$namefile = \"names.txt\";
$lines = file($namefile);

$fp = fopen($namefile, \"a+\");

if ($lines == $name) {
$lines = str_replace ($lines, \"\", $namefile);
}

fclose ($fp);

?>

[amcgrath]

1. $lines is an array. You should loop through it comparing the values to $name.

2. You don't appear to be writing the new file, fwrite().

3. So, unless name equals "Array", I don't see how this script can work.

[Anon]

any suggestions then, I just tried to write something based on what I could find. I don't really know php.

any help is greatly appreciated

[amcgrath]

Ok, maybe I'm wrong, but I thought my first post was suggestions.... but, here ya go, I'll explain:

$lines is an array. This means, using the file() funciton, you've created an array with each element corresponding to a line in the file read via the file() function.

So, that means, if the names.txt file looked liked this:
Allen
Bob
Mary

your $lines array is this:
$lines[0] = Allen
$lines[1] = Bob
$lines[2] = Mary

What you want to do is loop through this array and compare each value to see if it matches the $name var passed to the script.

Last, and not least, assuming you put in the loop code (read up on list() and each() functions), you need to write the file() back to disk. As it stands now, you are reading the file in (actually reading it twice with file() and fopen()).

So, to summarize:
1. Read the file in (using the file() function.
2. Loop through this array. If the name is not equal to the current value in the loop, add the value to another var (call it $new_file).
3. when done, fwrite() $new_file to the $namefile var on disk.

Keep in mind, if you do this, if you have two poeple with the smae name, both will be removed.