Andre Dubuc wrote:
Given a text string:
$OK = "Joe Blow, William Howard Anser, Hannie Jansen, etc, etc,";
[snip]
How would I get this 'before_last' function to iterate through the initial
string, so I could build a sorted list with both first and last names, sorted
by last name? I can't seem to get a proper 'foreach' statement to work, nor a
'while' statement.
There are few different ways. Here's one:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
function splitSortNames($namePartSeparator,
$nameSeparator,
$nameString)
{
preg_match_all('/(\w+)((\s(\w+)\s)*(\s?(\w+)))*/',
$nameString,
$tmp_names,
PREG_SET_ORDER);
$names = array();
foreach ($tmp_names as $i => $name)
{
$tmp = array();
if (!empty($name[6])) $tmp[1] = $name[6];
if (!empty($name[1])) $tmp[2] = $name[1];
if (!empty($name[4]))
{
$tmp[2] .= ' ' . $name[4];
}
$names[$name[0]] = join(', ', $tmp);
}
asort($names);
$names = array_keys($names);
return $names;
}
$names = splitSortNames(' ', ', ', $OK);
print_r($names);
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To check out a few other ideas along with a short (likely inaccurate) speed
test, check out http://www.thebuttlesschaps.com/sortByLast.html (there is
a 'View Source' link at the bottom of the page).
This code returns the names in the format in which they are given. You
can speed it up a bit by having it return the names in 'lastname, firstname'
format. For this, change
$names[$name[0]] = join(', ', $tmp);
to
$names[$i] = join(', ', $tmp);
and remove the lines:
asort($names);
$names = array_keys($names);
I'm really confused. I've read almost every entry on arrays/strings and
searched code snippets. Almost all focus on one element arrays such "apple,
orange, peach" rather than 2 or more elements such as "fancy cars, big
trucks, fast dangerous motorcycles,"
Is it even possible to accomplish this type sort on a string?
Any advice, pointers, or help will be greatly appreciated,
Tia,
Andre
Hopefully the code above will give you some aid--and you can probably improve
on that regexp in preg_match_all(). The other 2 ways on the site have totally
different methods, and different strengths and weaknesses. Maybe you can turn
one of them into something useful to you.
Hope this helps,
Torben
--
Torben Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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