CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpstring
James
James

Reputation: 43647

Reverse the position of two halves of a comma-separated string

$name (string) gives something like (possible value):

John II, Litten Draw

I want to update $name in two steps:

  1. Catch the words before first comma and throw them to the end of the string
  2. Remove first comma
  3. Create a file current_name.txt (or update if already exists) and throw to it source of $name

"John II, Litten Draw" should be replaced with "Litten Draw John II".

How can I do this?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 409

Answers (6)

mickmackusa
mickmackusa

Reputation: 47894

I would certainly use preg_replace() for the mutation and file_put_contents() to append the new date with a trailing newline.

Capture the leading non-comma characters as capture group 1, then match a comma followed by optional whitespace characters, then capture the remainder of the string as capture group #2.

Code:

$name = "John II, Litten Draw";

file_put_contents(
    'current_name.txt',
    preg_replace('/^([^,]+),\s*(.+)$/', '$2 $1', $name) . PHP_EOL,
    FILE_APPEND
);

Upvotes: 0

Josh K
Josh K

Reputation: 28883

Like this?

$split = explode(",", $name, 1);
$name = trim($split[1]) . " " . trim(split[0]);

Then it's just basic file I/O.

If you have a list of words (assuming they are all on separate lines):

$list = explode("\n", $names);
$nnames = "";
foreach($list as $name)
{
        $split = explode(",", $name);
        $nnames .= trim($split[1]) . " " . trim(split[0]) . "\n";
}

Upvotes: 4

user187291
user187291

Reputation: 53940

regular expressions are the way to go here

$a = "Obama, Barak";
echo preg_replace('~(\w+)\W+(\w+)~', "$2 $1", $a);

also works for multiple names:

$a = "
Obama, Barak
Federer, Roger
Dickens, Charles
";

echo preg_replace('~(\w+)\W+(\w+)~', "$2 $1", $a);

Upvotes: 2

John Parker
John Parker

Reputation: 54445

Here's some sample code that should work OK:

<?php

    function getCanonicalName($name) {

        // Check for the existance of a comma and swap 'elements' if necessary.
        if(strpos($name, ',') !== false) {
            list($surname, $forename) = explode(',', $name);
            $name = $forename . ' ' . $surname; 
        }

        // Trim the name.
        return trim($name);
    }   


    // Test data and file I/O.
    $outputData = '';
    $testData = array('Obama, Barak', 'Federer, Roger', 'John Parker');

    foreach($testData as $name) {
        $outputData .= getCanonicalName($name) . "\n";
    }


    file_put_contents('current_name.txt', $outputData, FILE_APPEND);
?>

Incidentally, this (like all of the solutions currently attached to your question) will cause data loss if there's more than one comma in $name. As such, if this is possible you should update getCanonicalName to cater for this eventuality.

Upvotes: 1

ircmaxell
ircmaxell

Reputation: 165201

This regex should do it for you...

preg_replace('#\\b(\\w+),\\s*(\\w+)\\b#', '\\2 \\1', $string);

Basically, it's looking for:

  1. A word boundry (the \\b part)
  2. Then one or more word characters (the \\w+ part)
  3. Then a comma followed by zero or more whitespace characters (,\\s*)
  4. Then one or more word characters (the \\w+ part)
  5. Finally, another word boundry...

Upvotes: 2

Michael Mrozek
Michael Mrozek

Reputation: 175375

See strpos to find the comma, ltrim to remove the whitespace, and fopen with the mode a to append to the file. You can also use explode to split around the comma, which is usually easier

Upvotes: 1

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