for statement help

[speedy33417]

I'm having a little trouble with my for statements. My goal would be to display customer names in columns. Assuming I have 18 names to display in 5 columns, I display 4 names in the first 4 columns and the remaining 3 names in column 5.

For some reason I'm getting a different result and all of my names are in one column, but my echoed html code is very weird!

Here's the php code:
[code]<?php
$columns = 5;
$columnsMinusOne = $columns - 1;
$columnMax = ceil($total/$columns);
?>

blah blah
<div align="center">
<table width="740" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<?php
for ($j = 0; $j < $columns; $j++) {
echo "<td valign=\"top\" align=\"center\"><span class=\"text1\">";
if ($j == $columnMinusOne)
$columnMax = $total - ($columnMax * $columnMinusOne);
for ($i = 0; $i < $columnMax; $i++) {
$counter = ($j * $columnMax) + $i;
echo $cust_firstname[$counter] . " " . $cust_lastname[$counter] . "<br>";
}
echo "</span></td>";
}
?>
</tr>
</table>
</div>

[/code]
$column is the number of columns
$columnMax is the number of names to be displayed in a column
$counter is calculated on the fly and should go from 0 to 17.

Any thoughts?

[glenelkins]

need to see more code , at the moment im seeing firstly that $total has no value.

[speedy33417]

$total is the number of names pulled from the database. In our case it's 18. Sorry.

[speedy33417]

By the way this is the html code that I'm trying to achieve:

[code]<div align="center">
  <table width="740" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
    <tr>
      <td valign="top" align="center"><span class="text1">
          Name 1<br>
          Name 2<br>
          Name 3<br>
          Name 4<br>
          Name 5<br>
      </span></td>
      <td valign="top" align="center"><span class="text1">
          Name 6<br>
          Name 7<br>
          Name 8<br>
          Name 9<br>
          Name 10<br>
      </span></td>
      <td valign="top" align="center"><span class="text1">
          Name 11<br>
          Name 12<br>
          Name 13<br>
          Name 14<br>
          Name 15<br>
      </span></td>
      <td valign="top" align="center"><span class="text1">
          Name 16<br>
          Name 17<br>
          Name 18<br>
      </span></td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</div>
[/code]

And for some reason I'm getting this:

[code]<div align="center">
<table width="740" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="center"><span class="text1">Name 1<br>Name 2<br>Name 3<br>Name 4<br>Name 5<br>Name 6<br>Name 7<br>Name 8<br>Name 9<br>Name 10<br>Name 11<br>Name 12<br>Name 13<br>Name 14<br>Name 15<br>Name 16<br>Name 17<br>Name 18<br>Name 19<br>Name 20<br></span></td><td valign="top" align="center"><span class="text1"> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br></span></td><td valign="top" align="center"><span class="text1"> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br></span></td><td valign="top" align="center"><span class="text1"> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br></span></td><td valign="top" align="center"><span class="text1"> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br></span></td> </tr>
</table>
</div>[/code]

Sorry. No line breaks...

[glenelkins]

before we go further why do it this way??:

[code]
<div align="center">
  <table width="740" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
    <tr>
      <td valign="top" align="center"><span class="text1">
          Name 1<br>
          Name 2<br>
          Name 3<br>
          Name 4<br>
          Name 5<br>
      </span></td>
      <td valign="top" align="center"><span class="text1">
          Name 6<br>
          Name 7<br>
          Name 8<br>
          Name 9<br>
          Name 10<br>
      </span></td>
      <td valign="top" align="center"><span class="text1">
          Name 11<br>
          Name 12<br>
          Name 13<br>
          Name 14<br>
          Name 15<br>
      </span></td>
      <td valign="top" align="center"><span class="text1">
          Name 16<br>
          Name 17<br>
          Name 18<br>
      </span></td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</div>
[/code]

rather than

[code]
<div align="center">
  <table width="740" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class='text1'>
    <tr>
      <td align='center'>Name 1</td>
      <td align='center'>Name 6</td>
      <td align='center'>Name 11</td>
      <td align='center'>Name 16</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td align='center'>Name 2</td>
      <td align='center'>Name 7</td>
      <td align='center'>Name 12</td>
      <td align='center'>Name 17</td>
    </tr>
    etc....
    etc
[/code]

[speedy33417]

I guess it wouldn't make a difference. I just happened to do it another way. Either case, something is off with the for statements...

[Barand]

Are you sure you know what you want?

In your original post you want 5 columns and in your example in reply #3 you show 4 columns ???

[speedy33417]

My mistake. It should be five. However the value of $columns determines the number of columns. On this page it will be 5, but other pages could be different. I will use it as a template and adjust the number of columns accordingly.

I was just confused why I'm not getting the result I was going for.

[Barand]

try something like this. Put your names in $a instead of my 1..18.
[code]
<?php
$a = range (1,18);

$numcols = 5;
$namesPerCell = ceil(count($a)/$numcols);

$tmp = array_chunk($a, $namesPerCell);

echo '<table border="1">';
echo '<tr valign="top">';
foreach ($tmp as $names) {
    echo '<td>';
    foreach ($names as $n) {
        echo "$n<br/>";
    }
    echo '</td>';
}
echo '</tr>';
echo '</table>';
 
?>
[/code]