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The sscanf() is a pre-defined function in PHP which returns parsed input string after parsing it as per the required format. It takes the input of 2 parameters and gives us the required array and in other case when other parameters are passed such as optional ones, the data parsed will be stored in them. It throws an error when there are more specifiers than the variables to contain these and the extra variables will get NULL if there are lower specifiers present than the variables.
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Given below is the syntax of PHP sscanf():
sscanf(input_string, format, arg1, arg2, arg3....)
Input Parameters:
1. input_string: This is the input string to be read.
2. format: We can specify the formats as per the below list as required:
There are also a few additional format values which are placed between the % symbol and the letter we give. (For example %0.3f)
Return values: Here there are 2 cases which can happen:
Given below are the examples mentioned:
Code:
<?php $text = "Random sentence goes here with numbers 5 and 8"; $f = sscanf($text,"%s %s %s %s %s %s %d %s %d"); print_r($f); ?>
Output:
In this example we are specifying a text as required. Then using the sscanf function and specifying the correct formats which represents our input string. Hence in the output the exact string is displayed as an array. This only if the format matches the data.
Code:
<?php // fetching the unique ID of product list($ID) = sscanf("SN/680001", "SN/%d"); // fetching date of manufacturing $manf = "March 03 2001"; // fetching the date of expiry $expiry = "March 03 2002"; // Parsing using sscanf function list($mon, $day, $yr) = sscanf($manf, "%s %d %d"); list($mon, $day, $yr) = sscanf($expiry, "%s %d %d"); echo "Product $ID was manufactured on $manf and will expire on: $yr-" . substr($mon, 0, 3) . "-$day\n"; ?>
Output:
In this example we are displaying how to check and display the product information like its Unique manufacturing ID and the date of expiry. So in the first parameter we are fetching the ID information and parsing it in %d format. Next we are fetching the manufacturing date and expiry date of the product and parsing the same as required format using sscanf function. Then displaying all the parsed things in one sentence. Multiple things can be added here to display the information we want.
Code:
<?php // Fetching designer info and to generate DressInfo entry $design = "13\tCoco Chanel"; $str = sscanf($design, "%d\t%s %s", $ID, $firstname, $lastname); // Displaying all the above details after formatting echo "<author id='$ID'> <firstname>$firstname</firstname> <surname>$lastname</surname> </author>\n"; ?>
Output:
In this example we are using sscanf function to first parse the ID and name of the designer. Then displaying the same in HTML format by splitting the names into first name and last name.
Code:
<?php // We are initializing the string here $arr = "Character PHP and number 7"; // Parsing the input string according to different format $format = sscanf($arr,"%s %c%c%c %s %s %d"); print_r($format); ?>
Output:
In the above example we are first initializing the string as required and this time including a few character sets in combination with strings. The same we are parsing using the sscanf function.
As seen above in all the examples, sscanf function in PHP is basically used to parse any type of the input string as per the requirements. There are a few cases where this function shows inefficiency to parse the strings, where there may be incorrect output when we try to parse a tab delimited string also having normal spaces in between. It also does not give the expected output if in the code there is a file name with its extension where it finds difficult to separate the two in presence of a “.”.
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