Simple PHP Quiz

gistfile1.txt

// Fun little quiz

Assuming this string: "January 5th, 2012"

In the shortest amount of code possible, place:

- 'January' within a $month variable
- '5th' within a $day variable
- '2012' within a $year variable.

See if you can accomplish this with one line of code. (And no snarky $month = 'January' answers.
Assume that the format always stays the same, but month, day, and year values can change with each referesh.

1. list($month, $day, $year) = explode(' ', date('F jS Y'));
2. list($month, $day, $year) = preg_split('/[\s,]+/', 'January 5th, 2012');
3. list($month, $day, $year) = preg_split('/[\s,]+/', date('F jS Y'));

Does that make @letsallplaygolf the winner or can it get even shorter?

This one does not fit exact criteria, however for numerical answers only (year: 2012, month: 1, day: 5), this is the shortest I could make it:

extract(date_parse("January 5th, 2012"));

Stol's got the first solution!

@Letsallplaygolf isn't correct, he missed the comma ;)

@m4tthumphrey - Good spot. Must learn regular expressions.

There's a slightly shorter solution than Stol's. Anyone?

@JeffreyWay I assume

list($month,$day,$year)=preg_split("/[ ,]+/",'January 5th, 2012'); 

doesn't count ;)

list($month,$day,$year)=preg_split('/[\s,]+/', 'January 5th, 2012');

Is slightly shorter but I'm sure that's not what you mean

list($month, $day, $year) = preg_split('/[\s,]+/', 'January 5th, 2012');

hehe - no.

@spacebeers @stol's is shorter as he uses ' ' instead of '\s'

@stol - That wasn't mine.

Okay - so I came up with two answers. The first was the exact same as Stol's, and the other was using the sscanf function, which a lot of people don't know about. Think of it as the inverse of sprintf.

sscanf('January 5th, 2012', '%s %[^,], %d', $month, $day, $year);

@JeffreyWay Haha nice! There's blatantly a shorter way using another hidden PHP gem!

@JeffreyWay - strangely enough my internet history seems to think I've read up about sscanf before even though I don't recall doing so. More challenges!!!

@m4tthumphrey - Do tell! :)

@m4tthumphrey Smelly comma :) I must have mis-understood the problem a wee bit.

I'm hunting!

Meh, you win @JeffreyWay, new quiz!

Was thinking about doing a fun little quiz/riddle each day. Nothing that will require more than a few minutes.

Do it!

Ironically, this is almost exactly (minus the comma) one of the examples on the PHP manual's sscanf page. :D

Nice quiz. Just know it late :(

@thecrypticace Haha good spot! I still think the preg_split method looks alot nicer than sscanf() even though it's a bit longer (6 chars) !

@JeffreyWay Thanks, didn't know about it. What about non-space separators? Try e.g.

sscanf('2012-25-12', '%d-%d-%d', $y, $m, $d)

It doesn't work. Instead, I'd need:

sscanf('2012-25-12', '%[^-]-%[^-]-%[^-]', $year, $month, $day)

when

list($year, $month, $day) = explode('-' , '2012-25-12');

is ok. Or am I missing something in the sscanf syntax?

// array
date_parse(trim("January 5th, 2012",','));
//vars
extract(date_parse(trim("January 5th, 2012",',')));

Of course, my calendar has 30 months of 12 days each :D

@topdown, what is the point of the trim() since there are no leading/following commas?

Combining @letsallplaygolf with @thecrypticace I get:

extract(date_parse(date('F jS Y')));

@xeoncross trim is stripping the comma
trim has an optional parameter for specifying a character list http://php.net/manual/en/function.trim.php
Wasn't thinking about date_parse already handling it.

@topdown I think @xeoncross was pointing out that trim() only trims characters from the beginning/end of a string, not the middle. So trim isn't required in your code :)

@JeffreyWay Nice teaser though. I didn't know about the sscanf() function.