Removing the last ' & ' or any 'string' in a concatenation?

[KitCarl]

I'm trying to generate a list of the names of associations from the choices made via check boxes which use the ID ($assoc) to pass a value.

The code below returns the names and as expected adds a ' & ' too each, but I would like to code it to not add the last ' & '.

Did a search on this board and scanned my 'PHP Visual Quickstart Guide' but found nothing to my understanding.

I'm just getting starting with PHP and am not sure this is even close to the best type of code to do this or if an entirely different method is preferred. Any help appreciated and an explanation is always a plus.

 

<?php  $sql = "Select A.a As name
FROM A
WHERE A.aID IN($assoc)";
$result = mysql_query("$sql"); for( $i = 0; $i < $row = mysql_fetch_array($result); $i++)
echo $row["name"]. ' & '; ?>

[papaface]

$str = trim($str, " & ");

http://uk3.php.net/trim

Thats how you'd remove it from a string.

[mikesta707]

by the way, that for loop doesn't make any sense.

for( $i = 0; $i < $row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
//specifically
//$i < $row = mysql_fetch_array($result)

 

this will technically work because of the way that PHP treats comparisons between different types, but probably does not work the way you think it does.

 

What actually happens is that $row is usually an array, and when you compare an array and an integer, an array is always greater. However, when mysql_fetch_array returns false (or some value that casts to false), which will than make the condition false, and exit the loop. perhaps you meant this

for( ; $row = mysql_fetch_array($result) ; )
//or more commonly
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))

 

Note: your loop probably "works", but just letting you know it may work in an unintended way.

 

and the way your code is now, you don't actually have a string to use trim on because you just echo the results of the query, without storing them

$str = "";//create empty string
while( $row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
$str .= $row["name"]. ' & '; //concatenate values

$str = trim($str, ' & ');
echo $str;

?>

[KitCarl]

Thanks for the help and the mini-lesson!

[Ken2k7]

There's rtrim too which is probably more specific.