[kjmatthews]

I wrote the attached script to take the ten most recent weblog entries in a database, and return them with the most recent first. When two entries occur on the same date, I only want the date listed once. This script will indeed do that, but with a strange side effect. The second post, when $i=1, appears twice in a row (once as I would like it, without a date, and once with). The final post, when $i=4 (there are currently only 5 entries in the database), does not appear at all.

I added echo $i; to see if that would shed any light on the situation, but it does not. The output looks like this:

$i=0
Post 1

$i=1
Post 2

$i=2
Post 2 (again)

$i=3
Post 3

$i=4
Post 4

Post 5 never appears. Comment out lines 16-19 (all mention of $date2), and the script displays all 5 posts, but the date appears on all of them. See the first 5 posts at this address for an example of how this displays: http://www.digitalovertone.com/weblog/http://www.digitalovertone.com/weblog/
Any thoughts?

[blaw]

Hi there,

Had a look at your script.

These two lines:

PHP Code:

$date1 = mysql_result($entries, $i, 'date');    //date of current post (e.g. postid=00004)

        $date2 = mysql_result($entries, $j, 'date');    //date of previously listed, i.e. NEXT chronological post (e.g. postid=00005) 

On the first line, you jump to $i-th row (i.e. current), but then you jump back to $j-th row (previous). This causes the internal cursor (pointer, or whatever it may be called) to always point to the ($i - 1)th row after the first ($i = 0) row.

Note that you haven't changed $i, so it gets incremented each time by for() loop no matter what, and hence it doesn't look that bad. If you had something like $j = --$i; then you should get the same row all the way down after the second row.

Now you know what the problem is. Good luck.

[kjmatthews]

Thank you very much, blaw. That makes perfect sense.