Extra null element in an array

samtediou · #1 07-Dec-2003, 14:49

Hello forum,

I've got a little bug I haven't seen before. I'm reading a list of collocations (phrases of two or more words) from a file and exploding the file string into an array. So far so good.

The collocations are phrases whose components are separated by underscores (_) instead of spaces. Here are some examples of the collocations I'm reading into my collocation array. (Hyphens are also permitted.)

12-tone_music
12-tone_system
14_july

Then, I run through each element in my COLLOCATION array and separate each collocation into a COMPONENT array. I wrote my script to read each character in the collocation string and do the following:

1. If character is not a "_" and not a "-", concatenate character to a temporary word variable

2. Else, once an underscore or hyphen is found, save the concatenated word to a COMPONENT array ($aryComp).

This is what I would like to see for, say, 12-tone_music:

PHP Code:


$aryComp[0] = 12
  $aryComp[1] = tone
  $aryComp[2] = system

What I'm finding, however, is that my arrays look like this:

PHP Code:


$aryComp[0] = 12
  $aryComp[1] = tone
  $aryComp[2] = 
  $aryComp[3] = system

It doesn't matter where the underscore is in a collocation, if it is between the 1st and 2nd component, or the 2nd and 3rd component, and so on.

Does anyone know of any problems with the underscore and php files or arrays?

Thanks,

Samtediou

JdS · #2 08-Dec-2003, 03:53

It's hard to say without looking at your code or function that handles the 'splitting' of those strings...

Here's what I would suggest:

PHP Code:


<?php

// a custom function...
function build_component_array( $str )
{
  // returns an ARRAY   
  return( preg_split('/[-_]+/', $str) );
}

// example...
$test  = '12-tone_system';
$aryComp = build_component_array( $test );

/* $aryComp should result in
Array
(
    [0] => 12
    [1] => tone
    [2] => music
)
*/
?>

samtediou · #3 11-Dec-2003, 12:52

Thanks JdS,

Much better now.

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Extra null element in an array

Splitting a string into arrays - using preg_split()

Great!!