Printing alphabets from a to z every time - php

Question

I am using the below php code to list Alphabetical(A-Z) characters in the rows. It works fine from a to z. My problem is that after "z", it starts with aa, ab,ac, etc.. I'd like it to start with a to z again every time it comes to z.
How can achieve this? thanks.
<?php
foreach (range('a', 'z') as $char)
while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($search_result))
{
echo "<tr>";
echo "<td>" .$char. "</td>";
$char++;
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp1'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp2'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp3'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp4'] . "</td>";
echo "</tr>";
}
?>
I tried below solution but it ended up with the same result.
<?php
$char= 'a';
for($i=0;$i<26;$i++)
while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($search_result))
{
echo "<tr>";
echo "<td>" .$char. "</td>";
$char++;
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp1'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp2'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp3'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp4'] . "</td>";
echo "</tr>";
}
?>

Answer 1

You could utilize PHP's built-in array functions for handling internal array pointers:
$range = range('a', 'z');
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($search_result)) {
echo "<tr>";
echo "<td>" . current($range) . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp1'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp2'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp3'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp4'] . "</td>";
echo "</tr>";
if (next($range) !== false) {
reset($range);
}
}
Checkout these references to learn more:
http://php.net/manual/en/function.current.php
http://php.net/manual/en/function.next.php
http://php.net/manual/en/function.reset.php

Answer 2

You can reference your array of letters by a calculated value, $i % 26, where $i is the zero based iteration count of your while loop.
$letters = range('a', 'z');
$i = 0;
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($search_result)) {
echo "<tr>";
echo "<td>" . $letters[$i++ % 26] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp1'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp2'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp3'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp4'] . "</td>";
echo "</tr>";
}

Answer 3

Firstly, get the characters from a to z in an array.
Initialize a counter (index) to access a specific character from the array.
Increment the counter inside loop.
If the counter value goes above 25 (index starts from 0 - so this represents 26th array item), reset its value back to zero.
Try the following:
<?php
// get array for characters from a to z
$characters = range('a', 'z');
$counter = 0; // initialize the counter (index)
while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($search_result))
{
echo "<tr>";
// access the character using counter index
echo "<td>" . $characters[$counter] . "</td>";
// Increment the counter
$counter++;
// Check and reset if the counter has gone above 25 (26th array item)
$counter = ($counter > 25 ? 0 : $counter);
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp1'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp2'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp3'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Rp4'] . "</td>";
echo "</tr>";
}
?>