regular expression

[fonny]

there is a variable

$name = "Smith,John";

how can we use a regular expression to swap round the names? to become John Smith?

Thank you

 

[sleipnir214]

Assuming that the format of the name is "lastname,firstname":

echo preg_replace ('/([^,]*),(.*)/', '$2 $1', 'Smith,John');

should do it.



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[sleipnir214]

The more I think about it, the more I think that the resource overhead of a regular expression engine is contraindicated here.

For something this simple, explode() would probably be better:

<?php
list ($last, $first) = explode (',', 'Smith,John');
echo $first . ' ' . $last;
?>



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[skiflyer]

Some benchmarking (Laziness means I only timed it to the second). Shows explode is significantly faster.

[ul]
[li]100,000 replaces
[ul]
[li] Regex: 3 seconds [/li]
[li] explode: 1 second[/li]
[/ul]
[/li]
[li]1,000,000 replaces
[ul]
[li] Regex: 22 seconds[/li]
[li] explode: 18 seconds[/li]
[/ul]
[/li]
[li]10,000,000 replaces
[ul]
[li] Regex: 237 seconds[/li]
[li] explode: 176 seconds[/li]
[/ul]
[/li]
[/ul]

*Disclaimer... non-scientific, server had other loads while processing, but tests were run multiple times so it's certainlly good enough for a guide.