Given two character arrays (or strings), each contaning only letters A..Z or spaces, and thus holding words, produce a program that determines whether or not the first word would preceed the second, in a dictionary.
Most of the problems towards the end of this chapter are very simple to complete in PHP. This one isn't an exception.
<? // generates random strings of nonsense function random_string() { // random number of letters for ($n = 0; $n < mt_rand(20, 40); $n++) { // if this isn't the first character // if the last character isn't a space // If there's a small chance if ($n <> 0 && substr($string, $n-1, 1) <> ' ' && mt_rand(1, 3) == 1) // concatenate a space $string .= ' '; else // otherwise, add a random letter $string .= chr(ord('A') + mt_rand(0, 25)); } return $string; } // create two strings $string1 = random_string(); $string2 = random_string(); // show both strings echo $string1 . '<br/>' . $string2; // show which would appear first echo '<br/>String ' . (2-($string1 < $string2)) . ' would appear first.';?>Which produces:
RLPQ J E OJMYRLR YSG AR N FVIV
ADBWY X Z L SJZXFSJ SA Q
String 2 would appear first.