[SOLVED] Where there's a will there a way?

[elmas156]

Hey guys, I'm trying to make some things work on my site and I'm having to try some different things.  What I'm trying to do is to take a string of text that has been set to a variable and extract certain parts of that string of text to make another variable.  For example:

 

<?php

$text = "dog/chicken/fish";

//then change this to:

$4legs = "dog";
$2legs = "chicken";
$nolegs = "fish";

?>

 

**Note: This is just an example... I do not really need to make variables to show how many legs a dog, chicken and fish have... only an example to simplify what I'm trying to do ;-)

[discomatt]

Well, it really depends on what you wanna do. In this case

 

<?php

$text = "dog/chicken/fish";

list( $legs4, $legs2, $nolegs ) = explode( '/', $text );

echo "$legs4 - $legs2 - $nolegs";

?>

[elmas156]

Great, it works.  What I'm actually trying to do is work with dates and compare them to the current date while sticking with a specific format.  Trying to work with date() functions wasn't getting me anywhere so I needed to revert to trying to break down a text string date (09/15/2008) and pull out just the year in order to compare it to current the current date obtained through php ($cyear=date("Y").  What you suggested works great.  Thanks discomatt!

[discomatt]

Glad I could help! Please mark this topic as 'Solved'

 

On another note, if you ever want to turn your date string into a unix timestamp, check out strtotime() and mktime()

[elmas156]

Thanks, I think this is the best solution for now but I'll check into other options as I improve my site.