Question

I have this string: $delims = ',^.;:\t' (which is used in a preg_replace() call).
I need two arrays .. one with those delimiters as the index ($delimCount), and another with those delimiters as the values ($delimiters).

The former will get values assigned from within a loop on the latter .. as such:

foreach ($delimiters as $delim) { 
    if( strpos($char, $delim) !== false) { // if the char is the delim ...
        $delimCount[$delim]++; // ... increment
    }
}

The way I have it now is messy, and I’d like to simply break that string into the two arrays … but I’m getting tripped up on the \t delimiter (because it’s the only one with two characters).
How can/should I handle that?

Answer 1

How I would handle your \t delimiter

$delims = ',^.;:\t';

$i = 0;

while($i < strlen($delims)) {
    if($delims[$i] == chr(92)) {
        $delimiters[] = $delims[$i] . $delims[$i+1];
        $i = $i + 2;
    }
    else {
        $delimiters[] = $delims[$i];
        $i++;
    }
}

Output of $delimiters

Array
(
    [0] => ,
    [1] => ^
    [2] => .
    [3] => ;
    [4] => :
    [5] => \t
)

As far as an array with the delimiters as an index

foreach($delimiters as $key=>$val) {
    $delimCount[$val] = $val;
}

Output of $delimCount

Array
(
    [,] => ,
    [^] => ^
    [.] => .
    [;] => ;
    [:] => :
    [\t] => \t
)

Hope this helps.