I'm trying to extract all numerical values from a string (a user's address).

I don't know where to start... Could someone show me an example of what I need to do?

Input, for example: 23 grant street
Output: 23

Thanks!

Well, if you want to play fast and loose with PHP's implicit type conversion, you can take:

$addressline = "Flat B 23 grant street";
$addressnumber = (int)$addressline;

Casting to type int, will cause the PHP engine to extract any recognisable integer value form the string (i.e. "23").

A more sensible approach might be to use the sscanf function to hunt for what you're after
(http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/function.sscanf.php), as in:

$housenumber = sscanf("Flat B, 23 grant street", %d);
$flat_if_any = sscanf("Flat B, 23 grant street", "Flat %s"); //Will parse-out "Flat 2A" "Flat IX", etc.

The "%." things are type specifiers. The page for sprintf has a list of them (http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/function.sprintf.php)

Take it easy,
Dan

Thank you Daniel!

I don't think it has to be too robust, though I should look it up in the documentation of the credit card processor that wants this info. I never thought of things like "Flat B".. The information is needed for an AVS (Automatic Verification System) for a credit card company and I think that fraud checking only happens on a numerical level, the first option should work perfectly there!

Thanks again!

Hmm, come to think of it .. Flat 2B, 23 Grant street would leave me with .. 223 instead of 23. Hmmmmm..

* get's documentation out *

Alright, it's been a few weeks, but... typecasting doesn't work, it always gives me a value of 0 (as opposed to 23 or whatever)... any other way?

How about my alternative suggestion of scanf?

As in:

$housenumber = sscanf("Flat B, 23 grant street", %d);

You're instructing scanf to retrieve any decimal value from the searched string.


Take it easy,
Dan

Ah yes, I forgot to say, that one gives me a parse error, I tried:
$addrnum = sscanf("$address", %d);
and
$addrnum = sscanf($address, %d);

I solved it this way, not elegant but it extracts all the numerical values, which is exactly what is needed according to the credit card processor's specs:

<?php
        $addresslength = strlen($address);
        $i = 1;
        $addrnum = "";
        while ($i <= $addresslength) {
            $curChar = substr($address,$i,1);
            if (ereg("[0-9]", $curChar, $reg)) { $addrnum = $addrnum . $reg[0]; }
            $i++;
        }
?>