Output PHP conditional to string, remove last character

Question

I am using wordpress's advanced custom fields, which uses the syntax get_field('custom_field_name'); to pull custom fields from the database. in this case, I have a series of checkboxes, and I am using PHP to see if each one has been checked, and if so, it will spit out a string. Here is my PHP:

<?php 
    if(in_array('brand-id', get_field('type_of_work') )): echo "<a href='../../work/#brand-id'>Brand ID</a> |"; endif; echo " ";

    if(in_array('print', get_field('type_of_work') )): echo "<a href='../../work/#print'>Print</a> |"; endif; echo " ";

    if(in_array('books', get_field('type_of_work') )): echo "<a href='../../work/#books'>Books</a> |"; endif; echo " ";

    if(in_array('web', get_field('type_of_work') )): echo "<a href='../../work/#web'>Web</a> |"; endif; echo " "; 

    if(in_array('packaging', get_field('type_of_work') )): echo "<a href='../../work/#packaging'>Packaging</a> |"; endif; echo " ";

    if(in_array('exhibit', get_field('type_of_work') )): echo "<a href='../../work/#exhibit'>Exhibit</a> |"; endif; 

?>

What this is doing is saying, if this checkbox is checked, then spit out a link for that checkbox. As you can see, I am echoing a "|" after each link. The problem is that the last link is followed by a "|". I would like to remove the last "|" programmatically with PHP. Perhaps I can convert the whole thing to a string and then use substr($string, 0, -1); ? Anny ideas how I would go about this?

Answer 1

$links = array();

if(in_array('brand-id', get_field('type_of_work') )) $links[] = "<a href='../../work/#brand-id'>Brand ID</a>";
....

echo implode(" | ",$links);

Answer 2

Use a string:

$checks = "";

if(in_array('brand-id', get_field('type_of_work') )):  $checks .= "<a href='../../work/#brand-id'>Brand ID</a> | "; endif;

if(in_array('brand-id', get_field('type_of_work') )):  $checks .= "<a href='../../work/#print'>Print</a> |"; endif;

Then: substr() on $checks: echo substr($checks, 0, -2);

Answer 3

1. instead of echo-ing the text directly, concatenate it to a string variable
2. use trim($string, '|') to remove trailing pipe | ( manual )