lots of text compressed to 1 line..

Anon

I have a text file that looks like this:

john jones f1
john jones f2
john jones f3

sometimes the part of f1 or so.. is not so clear cut.

Here is what I want to do, take the text file and run something against it so that i purges all but 1 records. It could either create a new text file or modify the current, obviously, i would prefer modify but that is not important.

for sake of the question, the text file will be called file.txt

Thanks, this is the last piece in my quest.

Anon

I wanted to add 1 more part,

The file has more than 1 person,

john jones f1
john jones f2
john jones f3
bill smith f2
bill smith f3
bill smith f4

so i just want, 1 line of john jones and 1 line of bill smith.

amcgrath

Since you never really say what you want to do with f1, f2, etc, I will assume that this info is irrelevant, for now.

Try this:

$data = file("text_file.txt");

while(list(,$v) = @each($data)) {
$info = explode(" ",$v);
$names[$info[0] . " " . $info[1]);
}

This is but one way to do it. With some thought, you could probalby come up with something a little more elegant, but this should work for you.

Anon

Sorry, I basically want to import it later. So I need to write it back into the text file or a new one so i can import it later.

Thanks

[deleted]

import into where? a database?

Anon

yes, a database. I already have that part done, well, it works, i just need to use the right data.

amcgrath

whatever, then write the array info to disk, you asked how get it to one line...

[deleted]

My point is: Why waste time trying to make PHP do what SQL already does with SELECT DISTINCT and GROUP BY?

Anon

Because when i output the database, it lists everything. I would rather just import what I need.

[deleted]

I think you are missing the point.

You can use the database to output only the data you need by giving it the correct query,
and you can get the database to import only the data you need by setting up the correct table structure.

If you want each name to occur only once, put a unique constraint on the name. Then you can import all the data you want, but the database will only accept each name once, and ignore the rest.

Anon

Vincent, I never thought of doing it that way. Write now, the system calls, select * where category_id=3

How do you format something to only call 1 of many semi-identical listings?

Thanks

Anon

Allen, the code you mentioned before, will that do the array stuff you are talking about now?

Thanks

[deleted]

Try something like

SELECT DISTINCT field1,field2 FROM table

Read the manual of your database (or any SQL manual) for more information about DISTINCT, and a ton of other tricks you can use to 'remove duplicates'

Anon

Vincent, I just looked a ton of info up about SELECT DISTINCT. Here is the problem i see:

from the database, it has a bunch of colomns but for this issue, only 2 are involved. but the data in the colomn to use the SELECT DISTINCT on, is different on each line,
john jones f1
john jones f2
john jones f3

but i only want the first 1. With SELECT DISTINCT it will allow all 3 of them because they are all different.

[deleted]

You may be able to do something with substring functions or regexps.

Anon

I ran this, but only thing that happened was nothing. Just a blank page, is it supposted to update the text file? create a new one or what? Am i supposed to run this by itself or as part of the import process?

Thanks