creating a variable from a variable

[seidel]

I have a variable

$document_number="AM101010"

I need to create a variable that will take the first 2 characters from $document_number and add wildcards to the end like this

$document_number_wildcard = "AM%%%%%%"

then I will be able to use the $document_number_wildcard like this for querying a table

<?
$find_department_supivisor=mssql_query("SELECT *
FROM supivisor_tracking
WHERE department LIKE '$document_number_wildcard'
");
while($row2=mssql_fetch_array($find_department_supivisor))
{
$department=$row2["department"];
}
if(!empty($department))
{
echo $department;
}
?>

after I run the script I sould get a result like this

AM

thanks

[[deleted]]

Are the strings fixed-length and do the allways or will you also have "er01", "448765833" etc?

[seidel]

fixed length

[seidel]

This is the solution in case you are interested

$document_number= "AM010102";

$department_parse= substr_replace($document_number, "", 2,8);

$document_wildcard = "$department_parse%%%%%%";

[[deleted]]

Don't you mean
$doc_wildcard=$doc_num[0].$doc_num[1].'%%%%%%';

[Anon]

Or, you could simplify it:

$document_wildcard= substr_replace($document_number, "%", 2,8);

Chris King

[steved]

Is it really necessary to have eight wildcards???

Why not just strip off the first two characters and append a single wildcard?