format mysql output based on content

[Donalo]

I have an address book in Mysql with the name row containing the surname, firstname format. Can somebody explain how to format the ouput into two by splitting the name row by where the comma "," is? I've also got an address field with each line seperated by commas, i guess the solution would apply to that too, although it could be up to 4 or 5 lines?? Thanks in advance..

 

[DRJ478]

PHP functions are named very well. if you want to split a string by some character, the function is split();

http://ca2.php.net/manual/en/function.split.php

Let's assume $row[name] is "Pan, Peter".

$newArray = split(',',$row[name]);

The yielded result is an array with as many elements as there are strings separated by commas:
$newArray[0] will be "Pan";
$newArray[1] will be "Peter"

The separator is removed.
If your address field has 5 lines, there will be 5 elements, if there are 4 lines separated by commas, there will be 4 elements.

From a database prospective and for clean data handling it is advisable to split distinctive fields in their own column. That makes searching and indexing on each of the distinct entities possible.

 

[Donalo]

Cheers mate, that's brilliant. Answers all my questions and more!

nice one.

D