PHP - Adding a character instead of a comma

Question

I have the following string, this is written froma database, so im not sure what the values are, but an example would be

my name, his name, their name, testing, testing

What i want to do is take out the last comma and add a space and the word 'and' so it appears as follows:

my name, his name, their name, testing and testing

Any help would be great.

Cheers

Answer 1

One option is to use preg_replace to match the last comma and its surrounding space(if any) and replace it with ' and ' :

$input = preg_replace('/\s*,\s*(?!.*,)/',' and ',$input);        

See it

Explanation:

\s*     : Optional whitespace
,       : A literal comma
\s*     : Optional whitespace
(?!.*,) : Negative lookahead. It says match the previous pattern( a comma 
          surrounded by optional spaces) only if it is not followed 
          by another comma.

Alternatively you can use a greedy regex with preg_match as:

$input = preg_replace('/(.*)(?:\s*,\s*)(.*)/','\1 and \2',$input);

See it

Explanation:

(.*)        : Any junk before the last comma
(?:\s*,\s*) : Last comma surrounded by optional whitespace
(.*)        : Any junk after the last comma

The key here is to use a greedy regex .* to match the part before the last comma. The greediness will make .* match all but the last comma.

Answer 2

One way to do it:

$string = "my name, his name, their name, testing, testing";
$string_array = explode(', ', $string);

$string  = implode(', ', array_splice($string_array, -1));
$string .= ' and ' . array_pop($string_array);

Answer 3

use this

$list="my name, his name, their name, testing, testing";
$result = strrev(implode(strrev(" and"), explode(",", strrev($list), 2)));
echo $result;

Answer 4

Codaddict's answer is valid, but it's easier to use strrpos if you're not familiar with regexps:

$old_string = 'my name, his name, their name, testing, testing';
$last_index = strrpos($old_string, ',');
if ($last_index !== false) $new_string = substr($old_string, 0, $last_index) . ' and' . substr($old_string, $last_index + 1);