Question

The accompanying 2 files (boynames.txt and girlnames.txt) contain the results of a recent census of boy and girl births in the last year. Each record of the files contain a given name and the number of new born children receiving that name. E.g.,

          Matthew 23567          or            Alison 17658

Each name is separated from the number by a blank space.

There are also some common names given to both boys and girls, e.g., Riley. They will appear in both the boy file and the girl file.

Write a PHP script that finds answers to the following questions.

1. How many names are common to both boys and girls?
2. List the common names with how many boys and how many girls have that name. Use an HTML table to display this data.
3. How many total boys and how many total girls were born last year according to the census?

Answer 1

The code for above question is:

<?php 
// saving the file pointer of the girls
$girlnames = fopen("girlnames.txt", "r") or die("Unable to open file!"); 
// saving the file pointer of the boys
$boynames = fopen("boynames.txt", "r") or die("Unable to open file!");
$total_girls = 0;
while(!feof($girlnames)) {
        // fgets() get input line by for the file
        // explode splits the input in array of the form ['name', 'count']
        $single_girl = explode(" ", fgets($girlnames));
        // storing as a key value pair where $girl['name'] = 'count'; 
        $girl[$single_girl[0]] = $single_girl[1]; 
        // get the total number of girls by adding the count
        $total_girls = $total_girls + (int)($single_girl[1]); 
}
$total_boys = 0;
while(!feof($boynames)) {
        // fgets() get input line by for the file
        // explode splits the input in array of the form ['name', 'count']
        $single_boy = explode(" ", fgets($boynames));
        // storing as a key value pair where $boy['name'] = 'count'; 
        $boy[$single_boy[0]] = $single_boy[1];
        // get the total number of boys by adding the count
        $total_boys = $total_boys + (int)($single_boy[1]);
}

$count = 0;
// getting the table ready for the output
$data = "<table><tr><th>Name</th><th>Girl count</th><th>Boy count</th></tr>";
foreach ($girl as $key => $value) {
        // name present in both girl and boy
        if (array_key_exists($key, $boy)) { 
                $count++; // count of common names
                // apending the result for the table data
                $data = $data."<tr><td>".$key."</td><td>".$value."</td><td>".$boy[$key]."</td></tr>";
        }
}
// ending with /table
$data = $data."</table>"; 
// printing output as required
echo("The total common names between boys and girls are : <b>".$count."</b><br>");
echo($data);
echo("The total number of girls born last year : <b>".$total_girls."</b><br>");
echo("The total number of boys born last year : <b>".$total_boys."</b><br>");
?>

girlnames.txt:

Reny 235222
Martha 123222
Riley 122212
Aarnav 12332

girlnames.txt(image):

boynames.txt:

Alison 17623
Aarnav 23433
Riley 12423

boynames.txt(image):

Output for the given boynames.txt and girlnames.txt: