Limit a while loop

[Guest]

Is there a way to write this where it will limit the number of times that it runs - say 20 times?

while($p_link = array_search("0", $links))

   {        

      $links[$p_link] = "1";

// do this

}

[bregent]

Coming from a non php coder...most languages allow you to include more than one condition in a while loop. So initialize a counter variable that you increment within the loop. And (not sure of the AND operator in php) it with the other condition. Something like:

$counter=0

while($p_link = array_search("0", $links) && $counter <20)

   {        

      $links[$p_link] = "1";

      $counter++

// do this

}

[David_Powers]

We'll make a PHP coder of you yet.

The only thing that's wrong is the semicolon missing from the end of each statement:

$counter=0;
while($p_link = array_search("0", $links) && $counter <20)
{      
  $links[$p_link] = "1";
  $counter++;
// do this 
}

[Guest]

Thank you, I just could not figure this out as I wanted to add an entirely new while loop.  However, this still is not giving me the results I want.

What I have is code that will get all the internal links from a url, parse through those links for certain content (set by the preg_match_all($search, $contents, $search_results)), then add that content to an array ($gold).

However, I want to limit the number of links that it parse through to say 20 links.

Using the information your provider earlier ($counter) – it skips the parsing through the links and just seems to skip over the get content and following code.

I have tried putting the counter in other places or even using additional while loops but have gotten nowhere.  Can you tell me where I should be trying to limit the number of links to parse?

Code is attached

[David_Powers]

I don't have time to go through nearly 300 lines of code. However, since you want to limit $gold to 20 items, it seems as though you could alter the following section of code:

$num_results = count($search_results[2]);
        
// split each matched phrase into words and add to the array - David Powers
for ($i = 0; $i < $num_results; $i++)
{
    $gold = array_merge($gold, explode(' ', $search_results[2][$i]));
}

Change it to this:

$num_results = count($search_results[2]);

// limit the number of results to a maximum of 20
$num_results = ($num_results > 20) ? 20 : $num_results;
        
// split each matched phrase into words and add to the array - David Powers
for ($i = 0; $i < $num_results; $i++)
{
    $gold = array_merge($gold, explode(' ', $search_results[2][$i]));
}

[Guest]

If you do get some time, can you explain this:

num_results = ($num_results > 20) ? 20 : $num_results;

Not sure I understand the ? 20 : $num_results; part.

Thanks

[David_Powers · Accepted solution]

It uses the ternary operator.

[Guest]

Thanks - that makes sense.  It is still causing me problems.  But, I am trying something else - we will see if this works.