bentwiener

to everybody that helped me. a great big thank you , i was so focused on it and not listening, i could not see what was in front of my face or what was being said to me.

Pandemikk - there is going to be over 500 profiles and 300 catagories, i have condensed the catagories from 300 to 8 to make it smaller to post, + i would need to add to the code everytime i add to the profile. making more work for me. MikeDean89 - your code only sorts by the $p_id, whitch i can do by just adding sort($lines); to the code that i already have like this. <?php $lines = file('database/profile.txt'); sort($lines); foreach($lines as $thisline){list($p_id,$p_status,$p_filestart,$p_filemodified,$p_first,$p_middle,$p_last,$p_nick) = explode('|',$thisline);{ $names []= $p_last.', '.$p_first.' '.$p_middle.$p_id.'.'; foreach($names as $value); {echo ''.$value.'<br>';}}} ?> the code is going to be used in a drop down box like this: Person <select name="person"> <option value=""></option> <?php $lines = file('database/profile.txt'); foreach($lines as $thisline){list($p_id,$p_status,$p_filestart,$p_filemodified,$p_first,$p_middle,$p_last,$p_nick) = explode('|',$thisline);{ $names []= $p_last.', '.$p_first.' '.$p_middle.$p_id.'.'; foreach($names as $value); {echo '<option>'.$value.'</option>';} }}?> </select> your help is not unappreciated, i thank you both for your help. but the code i have works great, i just need it to sort by $p_last. with over 500 profiles it would take allot of time to find a name in a drop box if they are not in alphabetical order.

the code above just explodes the entire database

<?php $lines = file('database/profile.txt'); foreach($lines as $thisline){list($p_id,$p_status,$p_filestart,$p_filemodified,$p_first,$p_middle,$p_last,$p_nick) = explode('|',$thisline);{ $names = array(); $names []= $p_last.', '.$p_first.' '.$p_middle.'.'; sort ($names); foreach($names as $value); {echo ''.$value.'<br>';} }}?> this only list data in order placed in databse

<?php $lines = file('database/profile.txt'); foreach($lines as $thisline){list($p_id,$p_status,$p_filestart,$p_filemodified,$p_first,$p_middle,$p_last,$p_nick) = explode('|',$thisline);{ $names = array(); $names []= $p_last.', '.$p_first.' '.$p_middle.'.'; foreach($names as $value); {sort($value);echo ''.$value.'<br>';} }}?> the code above gives me error: Warning: sort() expects parameter 1 to be array, string given

im using flatfile only because i feel it will work better for the application im using. yes - i would like to sort by last name in alphabetical order. http://php.net/manual/en/function.sort.php been there and inserted sort() in every way i could think the error states - looking for array only could find string i try to never ask for help. i have been searching the net for 3 weeks and found lots of sort() functions i have tried every sort() function that i find and only get errors.

it is displaying the lastnames in the order they are in the profile but do not know how to get it to sort by lastname - please help :'( <?php $lines = file('database/profile.txt'); foreach($lines as $thisline){list($p_id,$p_status,$p_filestart,$p_filemodified,$p_first,$p_middle,$p_last,$p_nick) = explode('|',$thisline);{ $names []= $p_last.', '.$p_first.' '.$p_middle.'.'; foreach($names as $value); {echo ''.$value.'<br>';}}} ?>