Biased Percentages Based On Array

Hi!

I've been racking my brain to find a way to do this but with no luck.

I have a string that contains items with corresponding percentages:

$string="item1.20|item2.60|item3.20";

I need to explode this string twice and put in an array so that I can have the array look like this:

$items=array("item1" => "20", etc...)

Then I will have the script generate a random number between 1 and 100 and if that number determines the item that is chosen based on its percentage value, it saves that value as another final variable.

Does anyone have any idea how I can do this?

Thanks a ton in advanced,

M2com

Given time, I would probably simplify this some. But here's a fairly good approach assuming I understand the question:

PHP Code:

---

<pre><!-- see below comment on the closing /pre tag (this is for visual formatting) -->
<?php
$string="item1.20|item2.60|item3.20";
$ar1 = explode('|', $string);
$percent = 0;
foreach($ar1 as $item){
    $ar2[] = explode('.', $item);
    $ar2[count($ar2) - 1][1] = ($percent += $ar2[count($ar2) - 1][1]);
}
$rnum = rand(1, $percent);
$randomresult = $ar2[0][0];
print_r($ar2); // just so you can see the multidimensional array, may be removed or commented out
foreach ($ar2 as $items){
    if($rnum <= $items[1]){
        $randomresult = $items[0];
        break;
    }
}
echo "\n$rnum"; // just so you can see the random number, may be removed or commented out
echo "\n$randomresult"; // this is the result. You can leave this line as is, or comment it out/remove it and do something else later with $randomresult
?></pre> <!-- the pre tag is just for visual formatting, if you are doing other thins with 
the code that either have their own format, or that aren't visual, it can be removed -->

---

Worked perfectly! Thanks a ton!