NYCPHP Meetup

[Ken Robinson]

At 03:43 PM 11/27/2006, Randal Rust wrote:

>Yeah, I know. This is the client's hair-brained idea. I told him I'd
>take a look. The problem all goes back to how they are handling their
>data.
>
>They are using LDAP for data storage. Each record has a 'key' value
>which they want to be unique. The key is generated from a combination
>of three user-input values, so it's not as easy as 'Browns.' In the
>current system, there is no check in place to ensure that the key is
>unique. In the new system, they want the script to generate the key
>and ensure its uniqueness.

I took your original code and modified it extensively. It now uses 
recursion to get a unique value and I add that value to the array. I 
put echo statements at the end for debuging purposes. I also 
hardcoded the "$newteam".  Have a look and see if this solves your problem:

<?php
$teams=array(
'Reds',
'Browns',
'Bengals',
'Cavaliers',
'Blue Jackets',
'Indians'
);
$unique=false;
//$newTeam=$_POST['newTeam'];
$newTeam = 'Browns';
function checkDuplicate($value,$teams,$cnt=1){
                 $chk = in_array($value,$teams);
                 if (!$chk) {
                         $teams[] = $value;
                         return array(true,$teams);
                 }
                 $nt = substr($value,0,-1) . $cnt++;
                 list ($chk,$teams) = checkDuplicate($nt,$teams,$cnt);
                 while (!$chk) {
                   $nt = substr($value,0,-1) . $cnt++;
                   list ($chk,$teams) = checkDuplicate($nt,$teams,$cnt);
                 }
                 return(array($chk,$teams));
}

list($unique,$teams) = checkDuplicate($newTeam,$teams);
echo '<pre>' . var_export($unique,true) . "\n";
echo print_r($teams,true) . '</pre>';
list($unique,$teams) = checkDuplicate($newTeam,$teams);
echo '<pre>' . var_export($unique,true) . "\n";
echo print_r($teams,true) . '</pre>';
?>

Ken