Question

I am storing numbers in a database with a string like 5,55,15,17,2,35

I want to remove say number 5 from the string, keeping the comma seperation set like it is.

The problem with using str_replace() is that all of the 5’s will be removed. If i use str_replace('5,'', $string) thats fine, but the comma wouldn’t be after the 5 if it was in the middle of the string or at the end. That same str_replace would also remove part of 15, and 55,

Am i missing something?

Answer 1

$array = explode(',', $string);
foreach ($array as $k => $v)
  if ($v == 5) unset($array[$k]);
$string = implode(',', $array);

You probably shouldn’t be storing a comma separated list of values in a single database column in the first place. It looks like a one-to-many association, which should be modeled with a separate table.