finding nth array element 1

[santanudas]

Hi all,
What would be the PHP equivalent of this Perl construct:

$ENV{"PATH"} = "/bin:/usr/bin";
my $ls = `/bin/ls  /path/to/dir/some_dir/`;
my @images = split /\n/, $ls;
my $name = "some_file.jpg";

my ($position, %pics);
$pics{$images[$_]} = $_ for 0 .. $#images;
$position = $pics{ $name };

all it's doing is filing in the array (i.e. @images) with values from “ls” command and then finding the position (i.e. $position) of a given file (i.e. some_file.jpg) in that array. How to rewrite that in PHP? Sorry if it's dumb questions and too easy to do in PHP but it'd be a great help for me if someone can show show me how to. Thanks in advance for your time helping me.

 

[jpadie]

two methods for you to consider. one closely allied to your code, the other pure php and platform independent

<?php
$ls = `/bin/ls  /path/to/dir/some_dir/`;
$images = explode ("\n", $ls);
$name = "some_file.jpg";
if (false !== ($pos = array_search($name, $images))){
	echo "$name is at position $pos of the array";
} else {
	echo "$name was not found in the directory";
}
?>

or
<?php
$fh = opendir("/path/to/dir/some_dir/") or die ("cannot open directory");
while (false !== ($file = readdir($fh))){
	if ($file != "." && $file !=".." && !is_dir($file)){
		$images[] = $file;
		if ($file == $name) $pos = count($images)-1;
	}
}
if (isset($pos)){
	echo "$name is at position $pos of the array";
} else {
	echo "$name was not found in the directory";
}
?>

 

[jpadie]

actually, method 1 can be improved upon whilst still keeping to the spirit of your code

<?php
$ls = '/bin/ls  /path/to/dir/some_dir/'; //convert from shell_exec to a cmd string
exec($ls, $images); //no explode/split overhead
$name = "some_file.jpg";
if (false !== ($pos = array_search($name, $images))){
    echo "$name is at position $pos of the array";
} else {
    echo "$name was not found in the directory";
}
?>

 

[santanudas]

actually, method 1 can be improved upon whilst still keeping to the spirit of your code

Yes you right and many thanks for your quick replay. It worked like a charm. I've just started PHP, so still learning to use (and find out) correct php function(s) to make things happen. Thanks once again.