[SOLVED] delimiting and explode

[timbrown]

Hello,

 

This has been causing me grief for hours!

 

I have a string like this -

 

"'something1','something2','1,2,3'"

 

I want to split or explode at the commas, without exploding the 1,2,3 part.

 

The values are user input so in fact could contain any characters.

 

Thanks!

[atlanta]

explode on ','

 

<?

 

$test = "'something1','something2','1,2,3'";

$test2 = explode("','",$test);

 

echo $test2[0];

echo $test2[1];

echo $test2[2];

 

?>

[timbrown]

Thanks for the reply.

 

I think that with your suggestion if the user included the characters ',' in the string then it would cause an undesired split.

 

I was thinking there might be a way of escaping commas like this -

 

something1,something2,1\,2\,3

 

but I cant figure out how to split only on the non-escaped commas.

 

by the way, the string is coming from GROUP_CONCAT in mysql.

[GingerRobot]

Erm, if you're pulling data from a mysql table, which you're concatenating with the mysql query, only to then explode, what's the point? Why not cycle through the rows and do what you want to do with the data.

 

Secondly, as you mentioned, the proposed solution would run into troubles if there was a single quote contained inside the string - if this is an issue, then what about if the user places a comma inside the string?

 

Edit: As a final point, you can do it like this, using regular expressions:

 

<?php
$str = 'something1,something2,1\,2\,3';
$bits = split('[^\\],',$str);
print_r($bits);
?>

[Orio]

The ugly way:

 

<?php

$str = "'a1','a2','1,2,3'";
$str = substr($str,0,-1);
$str = substr($str,1);

$parts = explode("','", $str);
echo"<pre>"; print_r($parts); echo "</pre>";

?>

 

 

 

The nice way:

 

<?php

$str = "'a1','a2','1,2,3'";

preg_match_all("/'(.*?)(',|'$)/", $str, $matches);
echo"<pre>"; print_r($matches[1]); echo "</pre>";

?>

 

 

Orio.

[timbrown]

Thanks,

 

I thought of using regular expressions like this but unfortunately this regular expression also replaces the character before the comma so you end up with "something" instead of "something1".

[Orio]

The regular expression way is working perfectly fine... The ugly way is not recommended lol

 

Orio.

[timbrown]

Hey thanks Orio, I missed your post while I was typing. Works lovely! Thanks very much. Tim.