$pos How To question

[BluePhoenixNC]

Sorry, but I did not know how to make the header say what I need.
I am trying to do a lookup of a value.

The situation is the following: I have the VIN (something like MHASCH21051035272) and I have a table setup like that:

ID VIN_ID Model Category
1 LYD1C model1 1
2 YCBL1 model2 1
3 KCAL3 model3 1
4 LZH1A model4 1
5 YAEL1 model5 1
6 YCFL1 model6 1
7 JCHL1 model7 1
8 JCJL1 model8 1
9 JCKL1 model9 1
10 JCML0 model10 1
11 SCBL1 model11 2
12 SCHZ1 model12 2
13 SCH21 model13 2
...

Now what I want to do is see if a value of VIN_ID is contained within the VIN and then give me the table row.
I assume I have to do something like:

[code]$mystring ='MHASCH21051035272';
$findme  = 'SCH21'; // loop through table to get those values
$pos = strpos($mystring, $findme);[/code]

Any help in this matter is greatly appreciated and I appologize for the lengthy post, but I would not know how to explain it better than by examples.

Thank you

[.josh]

have sql do it for you.
[code]
$findme  = 'SCH21';
$sql = "select * from table where VIN_ID like '%$findme%'";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
[/code]

[BluePhoenixNC]

[!--quoteo(post=386921:date=Jun 22 2006, 02:13 PM:name=Crayon Violent)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(Crayon Violent @ Jun 22 2006, 02:13 PM) [snapback]386921[/snapback][/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
have sql do it for you.
[code]
$findme  = 'SCH21';
$sql = "select * from table where VIN_ID like '%$findme%'";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
[/code]
[/quote]
Crayon: thank you for your reply, that is what I eventually want to do, but first I want to "validate" the VIN. In other words, I want to see if the string in VIN_ID can be found in the VIN. For that I need to check the entire column VIN_ID against the VIN and see if any of those can be found in the VIN, if this makes any sense.

[zq29]

[!--quoteo(post=386926:date=Jun 22 2006, 07:36 PM:name=Blue Phoenix)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(Blue Phoenix @ Jun 22 2006, 07:36 PM) [snapback]386926[/snapback][/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
Crayon: thank you for your reply, that is what I eventually want to do, but first I want to "validate" the VIN. In other words, I want to see if the string in VIN_ID can be found in the VIN. For that I need to check the entire column VIN_ID against the VIN and see if any of those can be found in the VIN, if this makes any sense.
[/quote]
Thats what Crayons code does... Searches all of the VIN_ID's in the database and returns all of the VIN_IDs that are found within the VIN held in $findme. You can just return a count if you like with:
[!--sql--][div class=\'sqltop\']SQL[/div][div class=\'sqlmain\'][!--sql1--][span style=\'color:blue;font-weight:bold\']SELECT[/span] [color=blue]COUNT[/color](*) [color=green]FROM[/color] [color=orange]`table`[/color] [color=green]WHERE[/color] `VIN_ID` [color=orange]LIKE[/color] [color=red]'%$findme%'[/color] [!--sql2--][/div][!--sql3--]
If that query returns a number higher than 0, you have a match.

[BluePhoenixNC]

[!--quoteo(post=386929:date=Jun 22 2006, 02:55 PM:name=SemiApocalyptic)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(SemiApocalyptic @ Jun 22 2006, 02:55 PM) [snapback]386929[/snapback][/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
Thats what Crayons code does... Searches all of the VIN_ID's in the database and returns all of the VIN_IDs
[/quote]

Semi: Thank you, too. I think I confused you guys more than necessary> I appologize, English is not my native language and php/mysql well... let's just say... n00b hits it.. ;)

let me try that again and hopefully I make more sense now:
$mystring ='MHASCH21051035272'; // the only known value and "static" user typed that in
$findme = $something out of the table; // loop through table to get those values
$pos = strpos($mystring, $findme);

so what I want to know is: "is in the variable $mystring any of the "strings" contained in the tablecolumn VIN_ID ?
Column Vin_ID has just that part of the vin which indicates the Model, therefore I need to find a match and it needs to loop through the table to return a result. I should get a match at position (ID) 13 since SCH21 can be found in $mystring all others do not match.... Does that make more sense ? Again my apologies for making things more complicated than they need to be.

[.josh]

example:
[code]
<?php
$vin = "MHASCH21051035272";

$sql = "select VIN_ID from table";
$result = mysql_query($sql);

$found = FALSE;

while ($list = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
   $pattern = "/" . $list['VIN_ID'] . "/i";
   if (preg_match($pattern, $vin)) {
      echo "found" . $list['VIN_ID'] . "<br>";
      $found = TRUE;
   }
}

if ($found == FALSE) {
   echo "no matches found.";
}
?>
[/code]

[BluePhoenixNC]

[!--quoteo(post=386961:date=Jun 22 2006, 04:22 PM:name=Crayon Violent)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(Crayon Violent @ Jun 22 2006, 04:22 PM) [snapback]386961[/snapback][/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
[/quote]

Crayon: Thank you very much :) That was exactly what I was looking for..... now I have to do some readup on php.net to fully understand your code example..... :) but it works out the box..... :) Thanks again...