Inserting a space 2 places after a decimal in a string - php

Question

In PHP, I am importing some text files containing tables of float values that are space delimited. All values contain two decimal places. A typical line would look like this:
1.45 22.87 99.12 19.55
However, some lines, if the number before the decimal is 3 digits long, the original file sometimes does not include a space. So what should be:
1.45 122.87 99.12 19.55
comes in as:
1.45122.87 99.12 19.55
What I assume I need to do is search the string for decimals, then look 2 spaces after that, and if there is not a space there I need to add one. I just cannot for the life of me figure out the most direct way to do so.

Answer 1

I would use regex:
$pattern = "/(-)?\d{1,}\.\d{2}/";
preg_match_all($pattern, "1.45122.87 99.12 19.55", $matches);
print_r($matches);
DEMO

Answer 2

This does what you want. Probably not the most efficient way to do it though.
<?php
$line = "1.45122.87 99.12 19.55";
$length = strlen($line);
$result = '';
$i=0;
while ($i<$length)
{
if ($line[$i] == '.')
{
$result .= $line[$i];
$result .= $line[$i+1];
$result .= $line[$i+2];
$result .= ' ';
$i += 3;
}
else if ($line[$i] == ' ')
{
$i++;
}
else
{
$result .= $line[$i];
$i++;
}
}
echo $result;
?>

Answer 3

This is a fixed-column-width file. I would parse these by substr().
http://php.net/manual/en/function.substr.php
for ($x=0; $x<strlen($line); $x+=4) {
$parts[] = trim(substr($line, $x, 4));
}
This will get you an array in $parts of all the fields. This is untested, but should work.

Answer 4

$line = '1.45122.87 99.12 19.55';
preg_match_all('~([0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{2})~', $line, $matches);
var_dump($matches[1]);
/*
Result:
array(4) {
[0]=>
string(4) "1.45"
[1]=>
string(6) "122.87"
[2]=>
string(5) "99.12"
[3]=>
string(5) "19.55"
}
*/

Answer 5

you could use preg_split() to create an array of the line using regex
$lineArray = preg_split("/(\d+(\.\d{1,2})?)/", $lineOfNumbers);
This would find all instances of ####.## and not worry about the spaces

Answer 6

I would do something like this, say the line of decimals is in a variable called $line:
$parts = explode(' ', $line);
Now you have an array of decimals values, so
$parts[0] = "1.45"
(float)$parts[0] = 1.45
$parts[1] = "122.87"
(float)$parts[1] = 122.87
// etc...