Question

Suggestions for an updated title are welcome, as I’m having trouble easily quantifying what I’m trying to do.

This is a web-based form with PHP doing the calculations, though this question probably has an algorithmic or language agnostic answer.

Essentially, there is an Amount field and a Charge Code field.
The Charge code entered represents a short-hand for several ‘agents’ to whom the Amount is divided by. Most cases are single letters, however there are a couple cases where this varies, and gives a bit of trouble.

Basically, A = AgentType1, J = AgentType2, L = AgentType3, and as paperwork and user requirements would have it, “A2” is also a valid replacement for “J”.

So an amount of 50 and a Charge Code of “AJ” would result in the Amount being divided by 2 (two agents) and dispersed accordingly. The same for a string like “AA2”.

I have currently set up process (that works) that goes like this:

Divide = 0;
RegEx check for AgentType1 in Charge Code: 
 Divide++;
 Set This-AgentType-Gets-Return; 
RegEx check for AgentType2 in Charge Code: 
 Devide++;
 Set This-AgentType-Gets-Return;
... etc ...

Then I divide the Amount by the “Divide” amount, and the result gets divvied up to each AgentType present in the Charge Code.

I know there must be an easier/simpler way to implement this, but it’s not coming to me at the moment.

Is there a way to quickly derive the number of AgentTypes involved in the Charge Code, and which they are?

Answer 1

I would probably just do something simple like this:

$valid_codes = array('A', 'J', 'L');

// deal with the special A2 case first, to get it out of the string
// this code could be generalized if more special cases need to be handled
if (stripos($charge_code, 'A2') !== FALSE)
{
    $found['J'] = true;
    str_ireplace('A2', '', $charge_code);
}

foreach ($valid_codes as $code)
{
    if (stripos($charge_code, $code) !== FALSE) // if the code was in the string
    {
        $found[$code] = true;
    }
}

Now you can get the number you need to divide amount by with count($found), and the codes you need to divide between with array_keys($found).