Question

$data = explode("\n", trim($_GET['names']));
while($i < count($data)) {
  if(!in_array($data[$i], $unique_names)){
    $unique_names[] = $names[$i];
   }
   $i = $i + 1;
 }

I am trying to accept only unique results from a textarea using this php code. It is not working because every string has an extra blank space, except for the last one.

I.E.
“jeff ”
“fred ”
“bill ”
“jeff”

so jeff will be added twice.

My question is:
How Do I get rid of that space?? I tried trim and it won’t perform as intended.

Answer 1

First of all, you don’t need to find unique values manually, you can use array_unique(). Secondly, trim() doesn’t work on arrays.

Try:

$raw_names = explode("\n", $_GET['names']);
$trimmed_names = array_map('trim', $raw_names);
$unique_names = array_unique($trimmed_names);