multi column child category

[please use the code button or backticks to mark code]

a few things:

– if you want ‘wp_list_categories()’ to generate a string to explode, you need to add ‘&echo=0’ to the args;

– ‘&exclude=’ is empty and could be removed;

– you haven’t defined a character for the ‘explode’; it is an empty string at the moment; '</li>' might be suitable;

– the same character is needed to ‘cement’ the bits; for instance in these parts $catArray[$i].''; instead of the empty string ''

– there is no output of the resulting strings; something like echo $catLeft; echo $catMiddle; echo $catRight; at the end might do;

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Template_Tags/wp_list_categories

Sorry for not using the code button. Thanks for the advice of adding the &echo=0 that was the part I seemed to be missing. For anyone else interested here is the code below:

<?php
	$catArray = explode("",wp_list_categories('orderby=name &echo=0&show_count=1&use_desc_for_title=0&child_of=8&exclude=&title_li='));
	$catCount = count($catArray) - 1;
	$catColumns = round($catCount / 3);
	$twoColumns = round($catColumns + $catColumns);

	for ($i=0;$i<$catCount;$i++) {
		if ($i<$catColumns){
			$catLeft = $catLeft.''.$catArray[$i].'';
	         }
		elseif ($i<$twoColumns) {
			$catMiddle = $catMiddle.''.$catArray[$i].'';
		}
		elseif ($i>=$catColumns){
			$catRight = $catRight.''.$catArray[$i].'';
		 }
	};
?>

<ul class="left">
      <?php echo $catLeft; ?>

<ul class="middle">
	<?php echo $catMiddle; ?>

<ul class="right">
      <?php echo $catRight; ?>

[mod: backticks are the character at the top left of the keyboard, to the left of number 1;
using the ‘code’ button:
to mark the code, click the code button once before entering the code, then once after;
or highlight the code and press the code button once]

don’t forget to close the <ul> tags in your output;

i am still surprised that the explode works with an empty string delimiter (?)
https://php.net/manual/en/function.explode.php

Thanks for the find on the ‘

‘ tag. I am suprised as well on the explode function especially after reading the documentation.