afreeorange

Here’s a little function I wrote after facing a similar problem on my blog. It seems to work for me… I’m sure someone can edit and improve it!

Here’s a sample usage:
listCatsAndExcludeSome('21,23,67,8', '<span>', '</span>', ', ');

// List categories and exclude a few
function listCatsAndExcludeSome($excludedCategories, $before, $after, $middle) {

	// Get list of desired excluded categories
	$excludedCategoriesList = explode(',', $excludedCategories);
	$excludedCategoriesListCount = count($excludedCategoriesList);

	// Get list of categories from WordPress
	$categoryCache = get_the_category();
	$categoryCacheCount1 = count($categoryCache);

	// Removing unnecessary categories from listing based on passed parameters
	for ($i=0;$i<$categoryCacheCount1;$i++) {
		for ($j=0;$j<$excludedCategoriesListCount;$j++) {
			if ($categoryCache[$i]->cat_ID == $excludedCategoriesList[$j]) {
				unset($categoryCache[$i]);
			}
		}
	}

	// Re-ordering array-indices and get the size of the array.
	// NOTE TO SELF: reset($array) has to do with array pointers and means something else!
	shuffle($categoryCache);
	$categoryCacheCount2 = count($categoryCache);
	$k = 1;

	// Now loop through and display the categories
	foreach ($categoryCache as $category) {
		echo $before.'<a href="https://YOUR_BLOG_URI/'.$category->category_nicename.'" title="All posts tagged with ‘'.$category->cat_name.'’">'.$category->cat_name.'</a>'.$after;
		if ($k != $categoryCacheCount2) {
			echo $middle;
		}
		$k++;
	}
}

I was looking for a fix for this 5 minutes ago! Thank you so much for your work ??