Selecting only part of MYSQL result

Like l *word*

[Knowles]

Ok I am writting a script where the first time you look at something it inserts a word, on that shouldnt be mistakenly typed in. The script is pulling from a MySQL DB. I need to have a way to check for the word and if present not readd the word so it doesnt replicate over and over again.

echo "<TEXTAREA name=\"comments\" rows=\"8\" cols=\"20\">$displaycall[9]

TheWord:</TEXTAREA>";

What is happening right now every time this updated it adds TheWord: over and over again. Any ideas how to check inside of the $displaycall[9] for TheWord:?

[jatar_k]

can you do a select and a mysql_num_rows to see if it returned anything before inserting?

[Knowles]

Well when its is updated again I want the orginal text (what is echoed before TheWord:) and what is entered after TheWord; to be placed in the DB. So unless I am miss understanding the num_rows would return something but it would be to late at that point because the submit button has been pressed and $comments is set.

[vincevincevince]

how about first checking if the word is there?

$sql="SELECT ......... WHERE `field` LIKE %word%";
if (!$r=mysql_fetch_row($mysql_query($sql)) .... go on and update itl

[Knowles]

I didnt explain this good. Even though the word is there its going to need to be updated. What I am trying to figure out is on the display side, due to the fact that I add TheWord: in the echo so its added every time. I need something simular to this:

if ($displaycall['9'] contains TheWord:){
Echo this;
}else{
Echo TheWord;
}

Does that make sense? I am just not sure what 'contains' could mean.

[coopster]

strpos() [php.net] may work for you:

if (!strpos($displaycall['9'], 'TheWord') === false) { 
 Echo this; 
} else { 
 Echo TheWord; 
} 

[Knowles]

Now that is a needle in a haystack! That did work thank you coopster, I was just starting to search PHP.net but I dont think I would have found this!

[coopster]

Sure.

The cool part is the PHP developers have come out with a case-insensitive version as well (stripos [php.net]) but it is available in PHP 5 CVS only right now. I didn't realize this until I received errors when I tried to use it the other day on a PHP 4.3.4 installation...bummer. I had to resort to the following workaround for case-insensitive:

$found = (stristr($haystack, 'needle') === false)? false : true; 

I only wanted to know if case-insensitive 'needle' was found, so I wanted to use the stripos [php.net] function which is faster and less memory intensive than the stristr [php.net] function. Oh well, the workaround will have to do for now.

[ergophobe]

Sure enough...

Note: If you only want to determine if a particular needle occurs within haystack, use the faster and less memory intensive function strpos() instead.

I never noticed that and have been using strstr(). I think two minutes with grep will speed up a certain script that calls strstr() a lot.

Thanks coopster

Tom