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How do I remove a trailing "comma" from my PHP for each function?

I have a working piece of PHP code which iterates a number of comma-separated values.
What I am having a difficult time doing is removing the trailing comma at the end of the last item found.

<?php foreach($vendor_cat as $vendorcat) { ?>
    <span id="vendor_category_list"><a href="<?php echo $vendorcat['href']; ?>" ><?php echo $vendorcat['category_name']; ?></a>,</span>
<?php } ?>

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any help would be greatly apprecaited.

thanks in advance

Dave Baldwin

Your first problem is that ,</span> is not part of a PHP string but part of the HTML content which PHP doesn't even see.

badwolfff

ASKER

Hi,

thanks. Could the function not be rewritten to count the number of items for that loop and add that many -1 commas?

I've done similar stuff in JavaScript but in PHP I am not sure how to do it.

thanks

Dave Baldwin

PHP doesn't touch the HTML that is in between the PHP tags. You have to put all of that in a PHP string for PHP to do anything with it. If you do that then you can replace the final instance with a version that does not have the comma.

badwolfff

ASKER

Ok
Could you help me with the code?
thanks

badwolfff

ASKER

In the meantime I was able to get an iteration count inside the for each function using:
<?php echo count($vendor_cat); ?>

Dave Baldwin

That doesn't help as long as the data is not in a PHP string. This is untested but it is the basic idea. You create the whole string in a PHP variable and then replace the last part.

<?php 
$thestring = '';
foreach($vendor_cat as $vendorcat) { 
	$thestring .= '<span id="vendor_category_list"><a href="'.$vendorcat['href'].'" >'.$vendorcat['category_name'].'</a>,</span>'
}
$thestring = substr_replace($thestring, '</span>', -8, 8) // http://php.net/manual/en/function.substr-replace.php
?>

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Ray Paseur

In case you're new to PHP and want to learn the language, this article has some helpful links.
https://www.experts-exchange.com/Web_Development/Web_Languages-Standards/PHP/A_11769-And-by-the-way-I-am-new-to-PHP.html

badwolfff

ASKER

Thanks Ray, trying to fix someone else's code. Mostly I can manage myself but sometimes there are these awkward problems.

Dave by the way after your function the out is empty now.

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Dave Baldwin

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How do I remove a trailing &quot;comma&quot; from my PHP for each function?

How do I remove a trailing "comma" from my PHP for each function?