7

What's the best way to accomplish the following.

I have strings in this format: 

$s1 = "name1|type1"; //(pipe is the separator)
$s2 = "name2|type2";
$s3 = "name3"; //(in some of them type can be missing)

Let's assume nameN / typeN are strings and they can not contain a pipe.

Since I need to exctract the name / type separetly, I do:

$temp = explode('|', $s1);
$name = $temp[0];
$type = ( isset($temp[1]) ? $temp[1] : '' );

Is there an easier (smarter whatever faster) way to do this without having to do isset($temp[1]) or count($temp).

Thanks!

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2
  • Don't think so, you'll get an exception/error if you try to access [1] without checking first. Commented May 19, 2010 at 16:10
  • This already looks like the most effective solution. Commented May 19, 2010 at 16:14

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
8 
list($name, $type) = explode('|', s1.'|');
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1 Comment

Nice trick to handle the potential Notice, and an empty string rather than a null
4

Note the order of arguments for explode()

list($name,$type) = explode( '|',$s1);

$type will be NULL for $s3, though it will give a Notice

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5 Comments

will still have to check if type is null and assign ' ' to it if so though
if you do: @list($name,$type) = explode('|', $s1), the notice will be swallowed. @Thomas - leverage php's untyped nature and allow php to type-juggle the null value based on its usage.
@Mark Baker: i updated the code in the question, thanks for telling me.
@Marco Using Stef's trick of appending a | before the explode guarantees no notice and an empty string in $type unless there is a genuine $type value
@Kevin Vaughan: +1 for your comment, but I did a test: it's true that with your solution list will not fire a Notice anymore when $type is missing, but $type would still be set to NULL and NOT to empty string, you can test with a simple var_dump($type);
3

I'm a fan of array_pop() and array_shift(), which don't error out if the array they use is empty.

In your case, that would be:

$temp = explode('|', $s1);
$name = array_shift($temp);
// array_shift() will return null if the array is empty,
// so if you really want an empty string, you can string
// cast this call, as I have done:
$type = (string) array_shift($temp);
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Comments

0

There is not need to do isset since $temp[1] will exist and content an empty value. This works fine for me:

$str = 'name|type';

// if theres nothing in 'type', then $type will be empty
list($name, $type) = explode('|', $str, 2);
echo "$name, $type";
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2 Comments

I don't undertand the 2 limit you used in explode, what for?
you are right, but actually during development I use error_reporting(E_ALL); and when $str='name', the call to list($name, $type) rises a PHP error Notice: Undefined offset: 1
-1 
if(strstr($temp,"|"))
{
   $temp = explode($s1, '|');
   $name = $temp[0];
   $type = $temp[1];
}
else
{
   $name = $temp[0];
   //no type
}

Maybe?

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1 Comment

Just a heads-up: If all you want to do is check if a needle-string is in a haystack-string, then you should use strpos() !== false, it's significantly faster than strstr().

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