Hi,

In this tutorial you will see some usage examples of the function range(). They are very effective when you need to create a range of elements. For instance let’s say you need to list some content using an alphabetical search. Here’s a way to do it:

<?php
/*
Alternative array

array('a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z');
*/

$non_alpha = array('#');
$alphabetical_array = range('a','z'); 

$final_array = array_merge($non_alpha, $alphabetical_array);

function AddLinks($letter)
{
$title = strtoupper($letter);
$a = "<a href='alpha_search.php?letter=".$letter."'>".$title."</a>";
return($a);
}

// Use array_map to modify the array by adding the links

$format_array = array_map("AddLinks", $final_array);

echo implode(" | ", $format_array);
?>

Our code will nicely output the alphabetical navigation links with the URL for each letter:

Other examples of range() usage:

<?php
// 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ... 30

$sample_one = range(1,30);

echo implode(", ", $sample_one)."<br />";

/*
Start with 50, up to 200 (increment by 10)
50, 60, 70, 80, 90 ... 200
*/

$sample_two = range(50, 200, 10); 

echo implode(", ", $sample_two)."<br />";

// 20, 19, 18, 17, 16 .. 3, 2, 1
$sample_three = range(20, 1); 

echo implode(", ", $sample_three)."<br />";
?>

Note: This range() function returns elements from low to high, but if low > high then the sequence will be from high to low.

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