Using PHP, I'd like to convert a string containing a Roman number into its integer representation. I need this because I need to make calculations on them.
It would suffice to only recognize the basic Roman numeral characters, like:
$roman_values=array(
'I' => 1,
'V' => 5,
'X' => 10,
'L' => 50,
'C' => 100,
'D' => 500,
'M' => 1000,
);
That means the highest possible number is 3999 (MMMCMXCIX). I will use N
to represent zero, other than that only positive integers are supported.
I cannot use the PEAR library for Roman numbers.
I found this great question on SO on how to test whether the string contains a valid Roman numeral:
How do you match only valid roman numerals with a regular expression?
What would be the best way of coding this?
How about this:
$romans = array(
'M' => 1000,
'CM' => 900,
'D' => 500,
'CD' => 400,
'C' => 100,
'XC' => 90,
'L' => 50,
'XL' => 40,
'X' => 10,
'IX' => 9,
'V' => 5,
'IV' => 4,
'I' => 1,
);
$roman = 'MMMCMXCIX';
$result = 0;
foreach ($romans as $key => $value) {
while (strpos($roman, $key) === 0) {
$result += $value;
$roman = substr($roman, strlen($key));
}
}
echo $result;
which should output 3999 for the supplied $roman
. It seems to work for my limited testing:
MCMXC = 1990
MM = 2000
MMXI = 2011
MCMLXXV = 1975
You might want to do some validation first as well :-)