Method to compare strings

[williamZanelli]

 

Just wanted to know what method I could use to compare strings, minus the apostrophe's, commas, full stops etc.

 

I saw it a few days ago.. im prettyy sure it exists!!

 

Thanks for your thoughts

[mikesta707]

What do you mean by "compare" are you trying to check if they are equal? check if they match a certain regular expression pattern? check if a string is inside another string?

[williamZanelli]

Well what I have is two strings

 

eg.

[string 1] The forums cool

[string 2] The forum's cool

 

So the only that differntiates these two is the apostophe, similary if I have 2 strings

 

eg. 

[string 3] The forums cool:

[string 4] The forums cool;

 

Here the difference is the Semi/Colon -

 

How would I compare 2 strings to see if they're equal, disregarding the colons, commas, apotrophes etc.

 

Does that make sense?

 

Thanks

[mikesta707]

ahh ok, well you could create a function to strip the string of whatever you want to disregard, and do a simple equal comparison

 

function isEqual($string, $string2, $disregard){
$string = str_replace($disregard, "", $string);
$string2 = str_replace($disregard, "", $string2);

if ($string == $string2){
	return true;
	}
else {
	return false;
}
}

$disregard = array(":", ";", "'", ",", ".");
$answer = isEqual("Hello, my name's johnny;;", "Hello. my names johnny", $disregard); 
echo $answer;

?>

 

Output: 1

 

[Monadoxin]

<?php
function compareStr($sString1, $sString2) {
	# Remove the characters you do not want
	$sNewString1 = ereg_replace("[^A-Za-z0-9]", "", $sString1);
	$sNewString2 = ereg_replace("[^A-Za-z0-9]", "", $sString2);

	# Compare and return True or False
	if($sNewString1 == $sNewString2) {
		return true;
	}
	else {
		return false;
	}
?>

[kratsg]

<?php
function compareStr($sString1, $sString2) {
	# Remove the characters you do not want
	$sNewString1 = ereg_replace("[^A-Za-z0-9]", "", $sString1);
	$sNewString2 = ereg_replace("[^A-Za-z0-9]", "", $sString2);

	# Compare and return True or False
	if(strcasecmp($sNewString1,$sNewString2) == 0) {
		return true;
	}
	else {
		return false;
	}
?>

 

http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.strcasecmp.php

[nrg_alpha]

ereg should be dropped like a bad habit, as it is part of POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface uniX) is already considered depreciated as of current stable release PHP 5.3, and will no longer be included within the core by default as of version 6. Learn pcre (PCRE - Perl Compatible Regular Expressions) instead.

 

function compareStr($sString1, $sString2) {
    $charStrip = ';:\'"'; // list of characters to remove
    $sNewString1 = preg_replace('#[' . $charStrip . ']#', '', $sString1);
    $sNewString2 = preg_replace('#[' . $charStrip . ']#', '', $sString2);
    return(strcasecmp($sNewString1,$sNewString2) == 0)? true :  false;
}

$str01 = 'The forums cool:';
$str02 = 'The forum\'s cool';
echo compareStr($str01, $str02);

[nrg_alpha]

Alternatively, we could simply skip the $sNewString1 and $sNewString2 variable creation process altogether and simply stuff it all into a ternary operator:

 

function compareStr($sString1, $sString2) {
    $charStrip = ';:\'"'; // list of characters to remove
    return (strcasecmp(preg_replace('#[' . $charStrip . ']#', '', $sString1), preg_replace('#[' . $charStrip . ']#', '', $sString2)) == 0)? true :  false;
}