PHP - Exit For Loop After Wrong Answer - php

Question

I'm trying to teach myself PHP. My current exercise combines a form (not included in the code, but it works) that requires the user to enter the name of a city. The loop and the if statement compare the entry with an array of state capitals to return an answer that states whether that city is a state capital or not.
If I leave out the elseif part, the code runs ok, but I have no alternative when the user has entered a city that is not in the array. But with the elseif, the first part of the loop doesn't execute. For example, if I enter "Albany" without the elseif, I get "Albany is the capital of New York." But if I enter it with the elseif statement, it runs the loop until it finds "New York" and it prints "Albany is the capital of New York."
I've googled this, and I've read the books on PHP that I have. And I also know that I'm making a very basic mistake. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
for ($i = 0 ; $i < count($stateCapitalNames); $i++)
if ($enteredCity == $stateCapitalNames[$i]) {
print "<p>$enteredCity is the capital of <b>$stateNames[$i]</b>. </p>";
} elseif ($enteredCity != $stateCapitalNames[$i]){
print "<p>$enteredCity is not the capital of a state.</p>";
}
?>

Answer 1

You can use break to leave the for loop.
You should look at array_search to find the index you are looking for. array_search returns false if the capital does not exist.
For instance
$i = array_search($enteredCity, $stateCapitalNames);
if($i !== false)
{
echo "<p>$enteredCity is the capital of <b>",$stateNames[$i],"</b>. </p>";
}

Answer 2

You are missing your brackets in your for loop. I'm surprised the elseif is the culprit and that the code doesn't fail anyways. But here is what I would do, errors aside:
$correct = false;
for ($i = 0 ; $i < count($stateCapitalNames); $i++){
if ($enteredCity == $stateCapitalNames[$i]) {
$correct = true;
$stateNames = $stateNames[$i]; // Updated $stateNames variable
break;
}
}
//You can check $correct here...
if($correct){
print "<p>$enteredCity is the capital of <b>$stateNames[$i]</b>. </p>"; /*Removed [$i] from $stateNames. For some reason, $stateNames[$i] wasn't updating outside the loop, but now it is.
}
This way, no matter what, until the code finds a correct answer, the user is wronge. Once it finds the right answer, it sets it as correct and exits the loop by setting $i to the length of the array.