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Posted by Rik on 06/20/06 19:36
StevePBurgess@gmail.com wrote:
> With a string of authors such as:
>
> Carson, David, Milne, Rebecca, Pakes, Francis J., Shalev, Karen,
> Shawyer, Andrea
>
> I would like to write a function to change every other comma into a
> semi colon (thereby defining where one name ends and the next begins).
>
> I could do it by writing a complex (and slow) procedure - but is there
> a quick way of doing it using regular expressions, for example?
Regular expressions can be used, I'd think this is faster:
$array = explode(',', $authors);
$new_authors = '';
$i = 0;
while(!empty($array)){
$delimter = (($i % 2)==0) ? ',' : ';';
$new_authors .= array_shift($array).$delimiter;
$i++;
//or, to get an array:
//$new_authors[] = array_shift($array).','.array_shift($array);
}
If you want a regular expression (which almost certainly will be slower):
$authors = preg_replace('/([^,]*),([^,]*),/s','$1,$2;',$authors);
Similar, to get them directly in an array:
preg_match_all('/([^,]*,){2}/s',$authors,$matches);
Grtz,
--
Rik Wasmus
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