Friday, May 25, 2012

Why doesn"t this code simply print letters A to Z?



<?php
for ($i = 'a'; $i <= 'z'; $i++)
echo "$i\n";



This snippet gives the following output (newlines are replaced by spaces):




a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au av aw ax ay az ba bb bc bd be bf bg bh bi bj bk bl bm bn bo bp bq br bs bt bu bv bw bx by bz ca cb cc cd ce cf cg ch ci cj ck cl cm cn co cp cq cr cs ct cu cv cw cx cy cz da db dc dd de df dg dh di dj dk dl dm dn do dp dq dr ds dt du dv dw dx dy dz ea eb ec ed ee ef eg eh ei ej ek el em en eo ep eq er es et eu ev ew ex... on to yz



Source: Tips4all

8 comments:

  1. From the docs:


    PHP follows Perl's convention when dealing with arithmetic operations on character variables and not C's.

    For example, in Perl 'Z'+1 turns into 'AA', while in C 'Z'+1 turns into '[' ( ord('Z') == 90, ord('[') == 91 ).

    Note that character variables can be incremented but not decremented and even so only plain ASCII characters (a-z and A-Z) are supported.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Because once 'z' is reached (and this is a valid result within your range, the $i++ increments it to the next value in sequence), the next value will be 'aa'; and alphabetically, 'aa' is < 'z', so the comparison is never met

    for ($i = 'a'; $i != 'aa'; $i++)
    echo "$i\n";

    ReplyDelete
  3. Others answers explain the observed behavior of the posted code. Here is one way to do what you want (and it's cleaner code, IMO):

    foreach (range('a', 'z') as $i)
    echo "$i\n";


    In response to ShreevatsaR's comment/question about the range function: Yes, it produces the "right endpoint", i.e. the values passed to the function are in the range. To illustrate, the output I got was:

    a
    b
    c
    d
    e
    f
    g
    h
    i
    j
    k
    l
    m
    n
    o
    p
    q
    r
    s
    t
    u
    v
    w
    x
    y
    z

    ReplyDelete
  4. Other's already said why PHP doesn't show what you expect, here's how you get the result you might want

    <?php
    for ($i = ord('a'); $i <= ord('z'); $i++)
    echo chr($i);
    ?>

    ReplyDelete
  5. Why not just use range('a','z')?

    ReplyDelete
  6. While the above answers are insightful to what's going on, and pretty interesting (I didn't know it would behave like this, and its good to see why.

    The easiest fix (although perhaps not the most meaningful) would be just to change the condition to $i != 'z'

    <?php
    for ($i = 'a'; $i != 'z'; $i++)
    echo "$i\n";
    ?>

    ReplyDelete
  7. <?php

    $i = 'a';
    do {
    echo ($j=$i++),"\r\n";
    } while (ord($j) < ord($i));

    ?>

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wow I really didn't know about this but its not a big code you can try echo "z" after loop Mark is Absolutely Right I use his method but if you want alternative then this may also you can try

    <?php
    for($i="a"; $i="y"; $i++)
    {
    echo "$i\n";
    if($i=="z")
    {
    }
    }
    echo "z";
    ?>

    ReplyDelete