I have a php script which is pulling some data out of a database and putting it into variables. What I want to do now is count how many times a particular set of values is coming up in the variables that I have stored... e.g.

var1 = NU
var2 = NU
var3 = MI
var4 = NU
var5 = MI

In example above i'd like the php to tell me that NU is there 3 times.. etc etc

Hope this makes it clear what I need.

I looked at the count command but that seems to be more of a math logic question?

Anyone know which command i need to use?

Do something like this

<?php $result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table WHERE stuff='123ABC'") or die(mysql_error());
echo mysql_num_rows($result); ?>

In this case it will look in the database and pull up every case where stuff=123ABC and then it will echo the number of times that occured. The result will be a number.

To make it look for some characters within a string which it sounds like you are trying to do use this:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE stuff LIKE '%123%'

In this case ABC123ABC would be found whereas otherwise it would be skipped.

Hope that helps.

Thanks just gunna try it in my script.. following the logic of it, seems to be doing what i need.. so fingers crossed.. will post the answer lol

ah ur theory was good... but the data i want to analyse is stored in a variable...

Any1 else got ideas? Endless searching not yet found me an answer...

<?php
$text = file_get_contents('myfile.txt');

$text = explode(' ',$text);

foreach ($text as $key => $word ) {
if (strlen($word) >1) {
$words[] = $word;
}
}

$count = array_count_values($words);

array_multisort($count,SORT_DESC);

$i = 1;
foreach ($count as $key => $value) {
if( $i <= 20 ) {

$countresultvalue = $value;
$countresultkey = $key;
$i++;
} else {
exit();
}
}

echo "$countresultvalue $countresultkey";
?>

ok so i got round my problem by getting the varaibles printed to a txt file and the above is reading the file and counting the number of times each word is appearing in the file.. which is what i want it to count... however, the next thing i want to do with this info is check to see if any of them are on there more than 3 times... Problem i am getting is i can't put it into an "if" question because the variable is being over-ridden, and just ending up with the last one... is there a way I can get this scrip to allow me to check if a certain word is showing up more than 3 times?? Help...

How about this?

PHP Code:


// get text from somewhere and store into $text

$words = explode(' ', $text);

$countedWords = array();

foreach ($words as $word) {
   if (array_key_exists($word, $countedWords)) {
      $countedWords[$word]++;
   } else {
      $countedWords[$word] = 1;
   }
}

/* 
 * $countedWords now holds all words once with
 * a number saying how many times it occured, as in
 * $countedWords = array(
 *    'NU' => 3,
 *    'MI' => 2
 * );
 *
 */ 


That sounds like it to me... now just gotta figure out how to make it do a logical test on it..

or im being really thick.. (my brain is having a blonde day 2day)

<?php
$text = file_get_contents('file.txt');

$words = explode(' ', $text);

$countedWords = array();

foreach ($words as $word) {
if (array_key_exists($word, $countedWords)) {
$countedWords[$word]++;
} else {
$countedWords[$word] = 1;
}
}

echo "$countedWords";
?>

is this right?

No, you can't echo an array that way, it would just print the word "Array". $countedWords holds all the words as keys and the number of times they occured as values, as shown above. To print them all out, try

PHP Code:

foreach ($countedWords as $word => $count) {
   echo "The word <b>$word</b> occured <b>$count</b> times.<br />";
} 


would this work for putting them into variables so i can do an if on them to check if any of them go over 3? or am i being thick again? As u see organising arrays is not my strength.

I still don't really know what you want with all this, so I'll give you two small examples and we'll see what you think.

PHP Code:

// Example 1
// Print the words which occured 3 times or more
foreach ($countedWords as $word => $count) {
   if ($count >= 3) {
      echo "Oh my god, the word $word were used $count times! ;)";
   }
}

// Example 2
// Remove words that didn't occur 3 times or more
foreach ($countedWords as $word => $count) {
   if ($count < 3) {
      unset($countedWords[$word]);
   }
}
/* Now, all the words that are left in the array
 * has occured 3 times or more, as in
 * 
 * array(
 *    'word1' => x,
 *    'word2' => y,
 *    'word3' => z
 * )
 * 
 * Where both x, y and z is 3 or more
 */

// Example 3
// Sort all words according to how many times they occured
$sorted = array();
foreach ($countedWords as $word => $count) {
   if (is_array($sorted[$count])) {
      $sorted[$count][] = $word;
   } else {
      $sorted[count] = array($word);
   }
}
/* Now $sorted holds all the words, grouped by the number of
 * times they occured, as in
 * 
 * array(
 *    1 => array('word1', 'word6'), // words that occured 1 time
 *    2 => array('word4', 'word5'), // words that occured 2 times
 *    3 => array('word2'),           // words that occured 3 times
 *    4 => array('word3', 'word8'), // words that occured 4 times
 *    5 => array('word7')            // words that occured 5 times
 * )
 * 
 */ 


Thank you for your help so far. I'll give you more detail on what I am trying to do.

I'm building a fantasy football website, and i need to include in the registration process a check to see if they have selected players from any given team more than 3 times. So if they have 3 players from AV it passes, but if they have 4 players from AV it fails.

The data is stored in a database and so far i have extracted the data into variables (for another part of the site). I want to take those variables (which contain the clubs for each player) and check to see if there are more than 3 instances of each club.

Hope this explains and helps you understand. If not I will try again?