Ryan Byrd's Tech Ramblings

so, the question goes a-like-a this: write a function that, given an array of strings, will return the number of those strings that contain the letters c,h,e,v,r,o and n in that order. there may or may not be other letters around and in between. Here’s was my first attempt:

$strings = array(
                 "i like cheetos, but everyone knows cheez-its are better",
                 "che guevara was born in argentina",
                 "i own a chevrolet",
                 "hello world"
                 );
 
echo(chevronMatch($strings));
 
function chevronMatch($strings)
{
  $chevron="chevron";
  $chevronCount=0;
  foreach($strings as $testString)
  {
    $hitCount=0;
    for($y=0;$y<strlen($testString);$y++)
    {
      if ($testString[$y]==$chevron[$hitCount])
      {
        if ($hitCount<strlen($chevron)-1)
        {
          $hitCount++;
        }
        else
        {
          $chevronCount++;
          break;
        }
      }
    }
  }
  return $chevronCount;
}

Obviously, iterative code like that would make a regex guru like bj upset. here’s my second attempt, this time with ereg

function chevronMatch($strings)
{
  $chevronsMatched=0;
  foreach($strings as $string)
    {
      $chevron=array('c','h','e','v','r','o','n');
      $regex="[a-z,\-\ ]*";
      $regexString=$regex.implode($regex,$chevron).$regex;
      if (ereg($regexString,$string)) $chevronsMatched++;
    }
return $chevronsMatched;
}