CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phphtmlawk
swam
swam

Reputation: 303

PHP and using awk?

First, is it possible to run an awk in PHP? I am trying to print the second column of an output that is stored in a variable. If this is not possible,

$f=foo.txt
$o=file($f);
$len=count($o);
$rnum= rand(2,$len);
echo $o[$rnum];
exec(awk -v '{ print $2}', $output); // This obviously isn't right, but is there a way to make this logic work?
echo $output;

An example of one line of output from $o[$rnum] would be : 12 20 dog, in which I would like to only get "dog" and store it in a variable

Upvotes: 1

Views: 865

Answers (2)

slevy1
slevy1

Reputation: 3820

The previous respondent is correct about explode. Here is the sample data file I devised:

my foo.txt:

12  20  dog
13  21  cat
14  22  fish
15  23  bear
16  24  lion

and here's a PHP script that does what you want:

<?php
$f="./foo.txt";
$o = file($f);
$len = count($o);
$rnum = mt_rand(0,$len-1);
echo "Random record: ",$o[$rnum],"<br>\n";
$data = trim($o[$rnum]);
list($n,$m,$animal) = explode("\t",$data);
echo "Just the animal: ",$animal;

You need quotes around the file name with PHP incidentally. Also, mt_rand is supposed to produce a more random result. My data file is delimited with tabs.

Hope this helps.

p.s. I would not recommend using calls like system or exec b/c there are security risks associated with these two functions. Usually there is a way to do things in PHP without having to resort to a system call.

Upvotes: 1

Alexander Kerchum
Alexander Kerchum

Reputation: 532

You are looking for explode()

If you actually need to execute a command in shell you can use system()

http://php.net/manual/en/function.explode.php

Upvotes: 1

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