Unexpected Array_Rand Behaviour

[leke]

I have a file with four lines of text (no empty lines).

Apocalypto (2006)

Doubt (2008)

The Skin I Live In (2011)

Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010)

and I want to grab four random keys from it...

php > $movie_title_file = "4-movies.txt";
php > $access_movie_title_db = file_get_contents($movie_title_file);
php > $movie_title_db = explode("\n", $access_movie_title_db);
php > $random_index = array_rand($movie_title_db,4);
php > shuffle($random_index);
php > print_r($random_index);
Array
(
[0] => 4
[1] => 1
[2] => 0
[3] => 2
)

as you can see, the results range form 0 to 4. That's five though and if I wanted to use the results to print out the index key to that line, then

echo $movie_title_db[$random_index[0]];

would print nothing because the $movie_title_db only has 0 to 3 (or 4) items.

 

How come array_rand works like this?

 

Thanks

Edited November 25, 2012 by leke

[requinix]

When you said there were no empty lines you lied. Unknowingly. There's a newline at the end of your file and after that is an empty line.

 

Also, file is much better for getting lines from a file.

[leke]

Wow, it appears I over complicated things

Thanks for the file suggestion.

$movie_title_file = '4-movies.txt';
$movie_title_db = file($movie_title_file);
shuffle($movie_title_db);
print_r($movie_title_db);