Stripping lines out of a file...

$lines = file($shufflefile);
	$mine = $lines[array_rand($lines)] ;
	$tabbreaks = explode("\t",$mine);

Code (markup):

I'm grabbing data from a tab deliminated file with the code above. I end up with three values:

tabbreaks[0]
tabbreaks[1]
tabbreaks[2]

Tabbreaks[1] includes a url and my issue is some of them are .js files or .css, jpg, etc.. I need to just discard any lines that contain certain values in one of the tabbreaks and not deal with them in the loop that follows.

Tried a few things and just spinning my wheels - any suggestions.

 

The easiest way would be discarding them inside the loop. (Would also be the fastest - Execution time-wise)

But anyway, can you be more specific about the "certain values"? Which files do you want to allow? .php? .html?

EDIT:
Maybe you can do something like this:

function strip_lines(array $line)
{
	return !preg_match('~\.(jpe?g|bmp|css|js|png)(\t|[\r\n]|$)~i', $line);
}

$lines = file($shufflefile);
$lines = array_filter($lines, 'strip_lines');

$mine = $lines[array_rand($lines)] ;
$tabbreaks = explode("\t",$mine);

PHP:

 

Big help there - thank you!

 

Well I'm almost there --- not quite working. I'm not actually doing anything different... basically not scrubbing the values.

function strip_lines ($line)
{
    return !preg_match('~\.(jpe?g|bmp|css|js|png)(\t|[\r\n]|$)~i'), $line);
}
function Randompostingtime($shufflefile)  {
	global $change;
	global $name;
    $lines = file($shufflefile);
	$mine = $lines[array_rand($lines)];
$lines = array_filter($lines, 'strip_lines');
	$tabbreaks = explode("\t",$mine);
	
		
		$name = $tabbreaks[3];

		$Link= $tabbreaks[1];
	
		$tags = get_meta_tags($Link);

		$desc = $tags['description'];  
		
		$desc = mysql_real_escape_string($desc);
	

	$change = '<p><a href="'.$Link.'">'.$name.'</a></p>
<p>'.$desc.'</p>';

	echo $change;
}

while ($counter <= $total) {

Randompostingtime("file.txt");

## rest of the loop

Code (markup):

 

This line:

$mine = $lines[array_rand($lines)];

PHP:

Should be below the array_filter() line, to make sure the bad lines are filtered out when we pick a random line.

 

Looks like the problem is with the strip_lines function.

function strip_lines ($line)
{
return !preg_match('~\.(jpe?g|bmp|css|js|png)(\t|[\r\n]|$)~i'), $line);
}

## Kicks up an error saying unexepected , on the line with the preg match.



I did have to change the function strip_lines array($line) as you see above. Any variation I did with array just didn't work - didn't like (array($line)) or array($line). Kept giving me parse errors.

 

Can you post an example of the text file you're parsing? So I can try it locally and test it.

 

Here is the structure:

Here is an actual example content

As I mentioned above though - it seems like the actual strip lines function isn't formed right - I just don't see what is wrong.

 

OriginPage	LinkToPage	LinkToPageStatus	LinkToPageTitle	OriginPageDate
http://www.constructionmaterials.home9improvement.com/key/Colorado	http://www.constructionmaterials.home9improvement.com/	ok	Construction Materials

Code (markup):

That might work a little better - apparently quotes doesn't keep the tabs

 

I've spent a couple hours on this now - About to give up and go back to python or ruby to do it. Anyone else see a problem or a reason this isn't working?