September 5, 2009 - Abu Ashraf Masnun

This is something for fun — nothing serious. It just happened that Google just sent a mysterious Tweet around 2 hours ago from now with an image with of the Google home page featuring an UFO. The UFO was seen pulling an O out of the google logo. But what the heck does that tweet mean ?

1.12.12 25.15.21.18 15 1.18.5 2.5.12.15.14.7 20.15 21.19 was the tweet.

Well, it’s nothing tough. Every number separated by a dot or space corresponds to the alphabet. So, I wrote a PHP script to decode this mysterious tweet and finally found the meaning:

masnun@ubuntu:~/Desktop$ php decode-google-tweet
all your o are belong to us
masnun@ubuntu:~/Desktop$

masnun@ubuntu:~/Desktop$ php decode-google-tweet

all your o are belong to us

masnun@ubuntu:~/Desktop$

So, it meant ” all your o are belong to us ” 😉
Sounds a bit odd ? Or wrong in grammar ? yeah, still, that’s the message. It is confirmed on the twitpic image.

And here’s the source code —

<?php

$num = array(); // placeholder for 1 to 26
$alpha = array(); // placeholder for a to z

for($i=1;$i<27;$i++) { $num[]= $i; } // dynamically store 1 to 26 in the array
for($i='a';$i<'z';$i++) { $alpha[]= $i; } // dynamically store a to y in the array
$alpha[] = 'z'; // manually add z to the array
$dict = array_combine($num,$alpha); // combine them to form a dictionary

// print_r($dict);

$string = "1.12.12 25.15.21.18 15 1.18.5 2.5.12.15.14.7 20.15 21.19"; // the code to decode
$arr = explode(" ",$string); // differentiate the parts

$meaning = ""; // placeholder for the ultimate meaning

for($i=0; $i<count($arr); $i++) {

$s = $arr[$i]; // dot seperated portions
$a = explode(".",$s); // seperate the numbers
for($j=0; $j<count($a); $j++) {
$ch = $a[$j]; // get individual numbers
$meaning .= $dict[$ch]; // look up in the dictionary for the corresponding char
 }
$meaning .=" "; // restore the spaces


}

echo $meaning."\n"; // echo the meaning

?>

<?php

$num = array(); // placeholder for 1 to 26

$alpha = array(); // placeholder for a to z

for($i=1;$i<27;$i++) { $num[]= $i; } // dynamically store 1 to 26 in the array

for($i='a';$i<'z';$i++) { $alpha[]= $i; } // dynamically store a to y in the array

$alpha[] = 'z'; // manually add z to the array

$dict = array_combine($num,$alpha); // combine them to form a dictionary

// print_r($dict);

$string = "1.12.12 25.15.21.18 15 1.18.5 2.5.12.15.14.7 20.15 21.19"; // the code to decode

$arr = explode(" ",$string); // differentiate the parts

$meaning = ""; // placeholder for the ultimate meaning

for($i=0; $i<count($arr); $i++) {

$s = $arr[$i]; // dot seperated portions

$a = explode(".",$s); // seperate the numbers

for($j=0; $j<count($a); $j++) {

$ch = $a[$j]; // get individual numbers

$meaning .= $dict[$ch]; // look up in the dictionary for the corresponding char

}

$meaning .=" "; // restore the spaces

}

echo $meaning."\n"; // echo the meaning

It was quite a bit of fun decoding the message with PHP. Well, I do agree that there was no need to use PHP here. But why do the hard work from memory when you have automation tools at your hand 😉 ?

While playing with PHP, I have found a fact that we can determine how many times a string occurs inside another string quite easily by using PCRE. In fact, we can use preg_match_all() to match a string (instead of a complex pattern) to another string and get the matches as an array. Then we count() the array’s first key to know how many times the string has been found in the other one.

We feed preg_match_all() a solid string as a pattern as the first parameter. And it’d do the job for us.

Here’s the code snippet:

<?php

$string = "my name is masnun. i am Masnun. my website is maSnun.com";
preg_match_all("/masnun/i",$string,$m);
print_r($m);

echo "\n";
echo count($m[0])." occurrences found \n\n";

?>

<?php

$string = "my name is masnun. i am Masnun. my website is maSnun.com";

preg_match_all("/masnun/i",$string,$m);

print_r($m);

echo "\n";

echo count($m[0])." occurrences found \n\n";

In the above example, we add an “i” modifier for case insensitive matching. If you want it to be a case sensitive matching, just ignore the “i” modifier.

Results:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => masnun
            [1] => Masnun
            [2] => maSnun
        )

)

3 occurrences found

Array

(

[0] => Array

(

[0] => masnun

[1] => Masnun

[2] => maSnun

)

3 occurrences found

Additionally this method can be used instead of strpos() when we try to find if a string exists in another.

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories