Question

From the topic itself, I need to compare a string to a line of text inside a textarea.

Here’s the output i got from php from my linux server which i have program that prints for devices that are available and i put it inside a textarea.

Device --------------      |        NAme       ------------------- |        Status  

/dev/ttyS0-----------| Profilic |-------------------|Available

/dev/ttyUSB0 -------| Test | ---------------------|Busy

Now I have an array of devices..

$devices = array("/dev/ttyS0", "/dev/ttyUSB0", "/dev/ttyUSB1");

Now how can i compare my array of strings if the following devices in the textarea exist?

Say if /dev/ttyS0 found in the textarea then it returns true because i have /dev/ttyS0 in my array of strings.

Sample code how i get output from linux to php.

echo "<textarea>";   
echo stream_get_contents($pipes[1]); 
echo "</textarea>";

What i Want to happen.(mockup code)

if(/dev/ttyS0 == in the textarea){
  enable this part of code
}

if(/dev/ttyUSB0 == in the textarea){
  enable this part of code
}

and so on....

How can i do that?..

Answer 1

Assuming your device descriptors should appear at the start of a line in the textarea by your format above, you can iterate over the lines and look for strpos($line, $device) === 0.

$lines = explode("\n", $teextarea_content);
// loop over array of device descriptors
// and make an array of those found in the textarea
$found_devices = array();
foreach ($devices as $device) {
  // Iterate over lines in the textarea
  foreach ($lines as $line) {
    if (strpos($line, $device) === 0) {
      // And add the device to your array if found, then break
      // out of the inner loop
      $found_devices[] = $device;
      break;
    }
  } 
}
// These are the devices you found...
var_dump($found_devices);

// Finally, enable your blocks.
if (in_array("/dev/ttyUSB0", $found_devices)) {
   // enable for /dev/ttyUSB0
}
// do the same for your other devices as necessary

// OR... You could use a fancy switch in a loop to act on each of the found devices
// Useful if two or more of them require the same action.
foreach ($found_devices as $fd) {
  switch($fd) {
    case '/dev/ttyUSB0':
      // stuff for this device
      break;
    case '/dev/ttyS0':
      // stuff for this device
      break;
    // These two need the same action so use a fallthrough
    case '/dev/ttyS1':
    case '/dev/ttyS2':
      // Stuff for these two...
      break;
  }
}