Remove "The" and "A"

[happyturtle]

When I sort the results on my website it shows all of the results that have "The" under "T" and "A" under "A".

 

For example I want the results to show like this:

 

The Simpsons would show up under "S" and not "T".

 

If anyone can help it would be must appreciated.

[fnairb]

How about ...

<?php
$titles = array("The Simpsons", "A Brave New World", "Then and Now");
foreach ($titles as $title) {
print "$title --> ";
if (preg_match('/^(The|A)\b\s+(.+)/',$title, $keep)) {
	$title = $keep[2] . ', ' . $keep[1];
}
print "$title\n";
}
?>

[happyturtle]

I am getting the information for a mysql database. There are 100s of entries.

[fnairb]

Gotcha.

 

One way to solve it would be to add another column (SORTABLE_TITLE or DISPLAY_TITLE).  You could then write a quick script to run through the entries to populate this new column with a more friendly string.

 

Another option would be to run through the records records before you use them to create a more friendly title.  Then sort those results.  Then use that.  Kinda heavy handed but it would work.

 

[.josh]

or combine a sortby and regex in your query.

 

or you can go through and rewrite all of the titles to put it on the end like so:

 

Simpsons, The

 

It's acceptable to leave it like that, displaying it, or if you want to nonetheless display it as "The Simpsons" you can have a condition in your display loop to look for it and reorder it.

[Andy-H]

// fetch data
$words = array('a', 'the');
$title = explode(" ", $title);
if ( in_array(strToLower($title[0]), $words) )
{
   for ( $i = 1; $i < count($title) - 1; $i++ )
   {
      echo $title[$i] . ' ';
   }
      echo ',' . $title[0];
}
else
{
   echo implode(' ', $title);
}

 

could do something like that?