Posted by Chung Leong on 04/17/06 21:48

news@celticbear.com wrote:
> Chung Leong wrote:
> > news@celticbear.com wrote:
> > > I'm making a recipe database, and need to have DB fields in mySQL that
> > > will have lists of values that would get sent to an array to be worked
> > > on.
> > >
> > > I anticipate that at times a comma will need to be used in the value
> > > itself. So, what's a commonly used symbol or something that people tend
> > > to use as a separator of a list that would then be used in the split()
> > > function to send the elements into an array?
> > >
> > > Nearly every punctuation has a chance of being in the actual data. Any
> > > suggestions?
> > >
> > > Thanks!
> > > Liam
> >
> > I usually use an ASCII control character. 0x1E is designated as a
> > record seperator. Don't know if MySQL would accept it or not.
>
> Interesting.
> I had to do a search on control characters and that 0x1e, because I
> have no idea what they are.
> (Well, except in Windows I know I can use ALT+(numpad) to write ASCII
> characters, but that's beside the point.
>
> Evidently 0x1e is shown as two carrets: ^^
> When I create the full value that would go into the field, would I
> simply insert ^^ between the different values before it gets sent to
> mySQL, and then use ^^ as the split() seperator?
> Or do I have to use that 0x1e label in some way?
>
> Does the ^^ tell mySQL or PHP something special?
> I can't seem to find anything with Google on it.

Do something like implode("\x1B", $record);. The character is
definitely not two carets.

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