Group array results in Alphabetic order PHP (continued)

Question

I'm sorry for the uncreative title.

I'm trying to group my array alphabetically. The accepted answer in this question (by Hugo Delsing) helped greatly to my task, but I still want to take things a bit further...

here's my current code:

$records = ['7th Trick', 'Jukebox', 'Dynamyte', '3rd Planet'];
$lastChar = '';
sort($records, SORT_STRING | SORT_FLAG_CASE);

foreach($records as $val) {
    $char = strtolower($val[0]);

    if ($char !== $lastChar) {
        if ($lastChar !== '') echo "</ul>";

        echo "<h2>".strtoupper($char)."</h2><ul>";
        $lastChar = $char;
    }

    echo '<li>'.$val.'</li>';

}
echo "</ul>";

I want to make things so that non-alphabetic items would get grouped together instead of separated individually.

example:

"7th Trick" and "3rd Planet" get grouped together as non-alphabetic instead of displayed separately under "7" and "3" category respectively.

any idea how to do it?

Make your question clear with some raw input data+ code what you tried+where you stuck+desired output what you want. Statements and links will not going to help any-one. — Alive to die - Anant, Sep 06 '17 at 13:23
Possible duplicate of [Group array results in Alphabetic order PHP](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14210480/group-array-results-in-alphabetic-order-php) — Hamza Zafeer, Sep 06 '17 at 13:27
Related and a very good candidate for code extension to suit your case: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43371496/group-array-elements-by-letter-range — mickmackusa, Sep 06 '17 at 13:59

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 06 '17 at 13:40

Remove the alphas from the array and show them after printing the alphas.

<?php
$records = ['7th Trick', 'Jukebox', 'Dynamyte', '3rd Planet'];
$lastChar = '';
sort($records, SORT_STRING | SORT_FLAG_CASE);

$alpha = array();
$non_alpha = array(); 
foreach($records as $val) {
   if (ctype_alpha($val[0])) {
      $alpha[] = $val; 
   } else { 
      $non_alpha[] = $val; 
   }
}
foreach($alpha as $val) {
    $char = strtolower($val[0]);

    if ($char !== $lastChar) {
        if ($lastChar !== '') echo "</ul>";

        echo "<h2>".strtoupper($char)."</h2><ul>";
        $lastChar = $char;
    }

    echo '<li>'.$val.'</li>';

}
echo "</ul>";
if (sizeof($non_alpha) > 0) { 
   echo "<h2>Digits</h2><ul>";
   foreach ($non_alpha as $val) { 
      echo '<li>'.$val.'</li>';
   } 
   echo "</ul>";
}

Thank you for answering, your code worked nicely... but the other answer is just too sexy to for me... XD — Leader, Sep 06 '17 at 13:59

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 06 '17 at 13:52

1

You can just add one line to your existing code to accomplish this.

$char = strtolower($val[0]);

// Convert $char to one value if it isn't a letter
if (!ctype_alpha($char)) $char = 'Non-alphabetic';

if ($char !== $lastChar) {

The rest of it should work the same.

answered Sep 06 '17 at 13:52

Don't Panic

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Splendid! Sexy one-liner saves the day!! XD – Leader Sep 06 '17 at 14:00
This will not group non-alphabetic entries though, which seems like what you would want, given that the alphabetic entries *are* grouped. – Scott C Wilson Sep 06 '17 at 14:22
1

@ScottCWilson I thought the OP was asking for all the non-alphabetic entries to be combined into one group. This should do that. – Don't Panic Sep 06 '17 at 14:26
You are right; I missed the fact that a sort was called in his code. – Scott C Wilson Sep 06 '17 at 15:52

Group array results in Alphabetic order PHP (continued)

2 Answers2