Question

I have two arrays that I’m comparing and I’d like to know if there is a more efficient way to do it.

The first array is user submitted values, the second array is allowed values some of which may contain a wildcard in the place of numbers e.g.

// user submitted values
$values = array('fruit' => array(
        'apple8756apple333',
        'banana234banana',
        'apple4apple333',
        'kiwi435kiwi'
        ));

//allowed values
$match = array('allowed' => array(
        'apple*apple333',
        'banana234banana',
        'kiwi*kiwi'
        ));

I need to know whether or not all of the values in the first array, match a value in the second array.

This is what I’m using:

// the number of values to validate
$valueCount = count($values['fruit']);

// the number of allowed to compare against
$matchCount = count($match['allowed']);

// the number of values passed validation
$passed = 0;

// update allowed wildcards to regular expression for preg_match
foreach($match['allowed'] as &$allowed)
{
    $allowed = str_replace(array('*'), array('([0-9]+)'), $allowed);
}

// for each value match against allowed values
foreach($values['fruit'] as $fruit)
{
    $i = 0;
    $status = false;
    while($i < $matchCount && $status == false)
    {
        $result = preg_match('/' . $match['allowed'][$i] . '/', $fruit);
        if ($result)
        {
            $status = true;
            $passed++;
        }
        $i++;
    }
}

// check all passed validation
if($passed === $valueCount)
{
    echo 'hurray!';
}
else
{
    echo 'fail';
}

I feel like I might be missing out on a PHP function that would do a better job than a while loop within a foreach loop. Or am I wrong?

Update: Sorry I forgot to mention, numbers may occur more than 1 place within the values, but there will only ever be 1 wildcard. I’ve updated the arrays to represent this.

Answer 1

If you don’t want to have a loop inside another, it would be better if you grouped your $match regex.

You could get the whole functionality with a lot less code, which might arguably be more efficient than your current solution:

// user submitted values
$values = array(
          'fruit' => array(
              'apple8756apple',
              'banana234banana',
              'apple4apple',
              'kiwi51kiwi'
            )
          );


$match = array(
           'allowed' => array(
              'apple*apple',
              'banana234banana',
              'kiwi*kiwi'
            )
          );

$allowed = '('.implode(')|(',$match['allowed']).')';
$allowed = str_replace(array('*'), array('[0-9]+'), $allowed);


foreach($values['fruit'] as $fruit){
  if(preg_match('#'.$allowed.'#',$fruit))
    $matched[] = $fruit;
}

print_r($matched);

See here: http://codepad.viper-7.com/8fpThQ