Data Not Being Parsed Correctly - php

Question

I have a simple data format that goes as follows:
stuff/stuff/stuff
An example would be:
data/test/hello/hello2
In order to retrieve a certain piece of data, one would use my parser, which tries to do the following:
In data/test/hello/hello2
You want to retrieve the data under data/test (which is hello). My parser's code is below:
function getData($data, $pattern)
{
$info = false;
$dataLineArray = explode("\n", $data);
foreach($dataLineArray as &$line)
{
if (strpos($line,$pattern) !== false) {
$lineArray = explode("/", $line);
$patternArray = explode("/", $pattern);
$iteration = 0;
foreach($lineArray as &$lineData)
{
if($patternArray[$iteration] == $lineData)
{
$iteration++;
}
else
{
$info = $lineData;
}
}
}
}
return $info;
}
However, it always seems to return the last item, which in this case is hello2:
echo getData("data/test/hello/hello2", "data/test");
Gives Me;
hello2
What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

If you want the first element after the pattern, put break in the loop:
foreach($lineArray as $lineData)
{
if($patternArray[$iteration] == $lineData)
{
$iteration++;
}
elseif ($iteration == count($patternArray))
{
$info = $lineData;
break;
}
}
I also check $iteration == count($patternArray) so that it won't return intermediate elements, e.g.
/data/foo/test/hello/hello2
will return hello rather than foo.
P.S. There doesn't seem to be any reason to use references instead of ordinary variables in your loops, since you never assign to the reference variables.