PHP Search

[MasterHernan]

I wanted to know if there is a way with PHP to read files and just pick out certain words. For example, I have an essay paper and I want to see if with php I can find out how many times I said the word "for".

[stlewis]

The answer to your question is "Yes", and...if the example you provided is the practical use you had in mind...the extension to that answer is "there are easier ways"...Most good text editing software, comes with features that allow you to do word counts for specific words, so I'd just recommend feeding your essay in to a program like that if that's what you need the function for.

 

Otherwise, if you've got a broader idea in mind, the answer to your question lies in the use of Regular Expressions for text matching...using the preg_match() in PHP, you can match a specific string pattern, and return every match to that pattern in to an array...If Regular Expressions are a new idea to you, I highly recommend that you take a look at http://www.regular-expressions.info/.  They've got some great tutorials and reference on using regular expressions that should really help you.  Once you understand them, you can just look at the PHP manual for information about preg_match.

 

 

[MasterHernan]

Thanks a lot, ill look into it. The essay thing was just an example from the actual thing I'm trying to do.

[Barand]

try

<?php
$essay = "An example for you showing how to search for 'for' and count the occurences";

$count = substr_count($essay, 'for');

echo $count;      // --> 3
?>

[Fadion]

Barand posted a nice and simple approach, but as we're in strings manipulation:

 

For counting all the characters in a text:

$text = 'This is just some short text';
echo count(explode(' ', $text)); //it will print => 6

 

For printing how many times each character is used in a text:

$text = 'This is just some other short text';
foreach(count_chars($text, 1) as $key=>$val){
      echo "Character: " . chr($key) . " is used $val times<br />";
}