{"id":49,"date":"2011-02-15T11:56:40","date_gmt":"2011-02-15T11:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/?p=49"},"modified":"2011-02-15T12:21:53","modified_gmt":"2011-02-15T12:21:53","slug":"normalizing-a-string-example-php","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/normalizing-a-string-example-php\/","title":{"rendered":"Normalizing a string (PHP)"},"content":{"rendered":"

We'll present one algorithm below which demonstrates the use of a loop and the ord<\/a> function to step through the characters in a string.<\/p>\n

In our case, we wish to normalize strings which are formatted as such:<\/p>\n

unitedStates, tomSmith, fordFocus<\/p>\n

to return their human readable form (United States, Tom Smith, Ford Focus)<\/p>\n

If you are not familiar with regular expressions, the following function below serves as a good example:<\/p>\n

function normalizeString($tstring) {
\n\t   
\n\t    $normalizedString = '';
\n\t    $position = 0;
\n\t   
\n\t    while($char = substr($tstring, $position, 1)) {
\n\t        if (ord($char) >=65 && ord($char) <= 90)
\n\t            $normalizedString .= ' ';
\n\t        $normalizedString .= $char;
\n\t        $position += 1;
\n\t    }
\n\t   
\n\t    return ucfirst($normalizedString);
\n\t   
\n\t}<\/code><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now, to do the exact same with regular expressions:<\/p>\n

function normalizeString($string) {
\n\t   
\n\t    return ucfirst(preg_replace<\/a>('\/([A-Z])\/', ' $1', $string));
\n\t   
\n\t}<\/code><\/p>\n

In our tests, the regular expression approach ran, on average, 10-15 percent faster than the loop approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We'll present one algorithm below which demonstrates the use of a loop and the ord function to step through the characters in a string. In…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"amp_status":""},"categories":[15,16],"tags":[17,18],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/52"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}