detecting duplicate values and stalling $rank counter?

Spreadsheets like Excel do a nice job of detecting if there are duplicate values with their rank function - this is what I would like to mimic.

This is my small script that detects the rank position of a variable Hank_Wins in a mysql database:




which, if you spit out the whole array, for Name Hank_Wins and $rank not just Robert's rank on Hank_Wins you would get something like (formatted better):

+-------------+-------+------+
| Name | Wins| rank |
+-------------+-------+------+
| Jamie | 10 | 14|
| Eric | 9 | 13 |
| Deryk | 7 | 12 |
| Mark | 7 | 11 |
| Matthew | 7 | 10 |
| Neil | 7 | 9 |
| Robert | 6 | 8 |
| Douglas | 5 | 7|
| Steven | 4 | 6 |
| Timothy | 4 | 5 |
| Christopher | 3 | 4 |
| Dana | 3 | 3 |
| George | 2 | 2 |
| James | 1 | 1 |
+-------------+-------+------+

Notice Deryk, Mark, Matthew and Neil for example all have 7 wins -but the $rank variables has incremented regardless (too bad for Neil especially) I want to be able to detect this and stop my $rank variable from incrementing if there is a duplicate elsewhere in the list - such that these 4 guys would all get the rank of 12, yet Robert would still get 8

MY BASIC ALGORITHIM?
Thus in the final version will involve the following:
1) $rank will not be a mutually exclusive list of numbers - duplicates should occur where appropriate, as in the example above.
2) Since Hank_Wins is already sorted in the Select statment, some of the work is already done - I just need to compare the "current"($current) value of $var["Hank_Wins"] with the "previous"($previous) value of $var["Hank_Wins"] as the script moves down the [i]while[i/] loop
3) if $current == $previous then the rank incrementer $rank has to be frozen somehow?
4) once $current does not equal (don't know this syntax) $previous then $rank gets incremented as $rank++

Close?

Okay now, how? - I can't quite get it...how compare values in a while loop? how to freeze the $rank counter for each duplicate "pass"?

This may work better

hmmm still not detecting duplicates...

output as follows, if I echo all 14 ranks:
8
14
5
7
9
10
3
6
11
4
13
12
1
2

I see what you are trying to do, I will work with it, if you have further ideas, much appreciated.

Got it working but one other question...

CHANGED CODE
Just had to change one variable in this expression from above:


should read:



THE OUTPUT
6
9
4
5
7
7
3
4
7
3
8
7
1
2
(ordered by surname, so does not look as above)
Which is not exactly what I expected but will be more useful to me in the end since I am using these ranks as weights - this will provide a narrower band of output values - see next.

OUTSTANDING QUESTION:
Excel actually ranks but picking up where it left off after duplicates.
Thus the start rank in the example above would be 14 and the end rank would be 1 - but with duplicates. Thus, if there were duplicates at rank 12 for 3 people it would read 14, 13, 12, 12 ,12, 9, 8,..., 1

I tried implementing this by simply inserting
rank++;

as follows:


To increment despite having a duplicate, but this produces the error:
Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_ELSE

How would I increment the $rank counter inside the if before the else - or is this just not possible?

What I have listed above is not right, but the attachment at this thread
http://forums.devshed.com/showthrea...0683#post160683
DOES work properly - see there for what it does.

thanks greggory, got me on the right track.