Posted by Oli Filth on 01/14/06 22:59

zek2005 said the following on 14/01/2006 20:39:
>
> I have a varchar field in my DB with numeric values separates by
> spaces.

Well this is generally a bad idea to start with - one of the principles
of good database design is atomicity, i.e. each field should contain
only one value.

i.e. instead of something like:

ID name values(VARCHAR)
================================
1 Alice 1 28 373
2 Bob 72 182 44

you should use two tables:

ID name
============
1 Alice
2 Bob

personID value(INT)
=====================
1 1
1 28
1 373
2 72
2 182
2 44


Not to mention that storing numeric values in a character-based data
type is a waste of space and processing time.


> I need to extract the numbers to create an array.

But if you must store your info this way, use explode() to extract the
individual values.


--
Oli

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