Is there a function to remove the last character (not whitespace, for example a surplus comma) of a string?

If not, what's the most efficient way of doing this with a very long string?

cheers

Paul

Do NOT use the chop function to try to do this - in Perl, chop removes the last character in a string, but in PHP it remomes trailing white spaces ...

substr_replace can be used to replace part of one string with another, and written:
          $outgoing = substr_replace($incoming,"",-1);
it will replace the last character of a string with nothing.

As regards efficiency ... I'm not sure.  I feel that this will be much better than cranking up a regular expression engine to do the job (although the code would be just as short),  but I am concerned at string duplication.  You could experiment with handling a string as an array, and replacing the last element of that array with "".

Are you embedding your PHP in a web page, or using it for heavy processing tasks?   I just ask because your own efficiency, and the efficiency that any maintainer can later achieve, might be far more important than saving a few machine cycles.   If the output result of your task is web page(s), then the amount of data to be presented on each page will be somewhat limited - I know web pages are getting bigger but ...

on 10/25/02 at 07:26:51, Graham Ellis wrote:

Do NOT use the chop function to try to do this - in Perl, chop removes the last character in a string, but in PHP it remomes trailing white spaces ... substr_replace can be used to replace part of one string with another, and written:           $outgoing = substr_replace($incoming,"",-1); it will replace the last character of a string with nothing. As regards efficiency ... I'm not sure.  I feel that this will be much better than cranking up a regular expression engine to do the job (although the code would be just as short),  but I am concerned at string duplication.  You could experiment with handling a string as an array, and replacing the last element of that array with "".

I think substr_replace should be okay, I'll do some tests. Thanks

Quote:

Are you embedding your PHP in a web page, or using it for heavy processing tasks?

This particular program I'm working on is for processing a large text file, analysing (its not just csv) and splitting it up, then putting the various bits into different tables a database (this bit I've figured out how to do reasonably efficiently). Its not for web output really (though I want to be able to run it from the web). I guess efficiency isn't that important, as its only something that will be run occassionally by admin users, but I want to get into the practice of writing efficient code for the job.

Quote:

I just ask because your own efficiency, and the efficiency that any maintainer can later achieve, might be far more important than saving a few machine cycles.

Sure, good point

cheers

Paul

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