[RESOLVED] What is the PHP operator for Contains? (for perl it is =~ )

bartertown

What is the PHP operator for Contains? (for perl it is =~ )

For example:

if ($forsale =~ "chicken")

         { print "youve got chicken"; }

Thanks,

-Trademaster_Adam
http://www.bartertown.org

levi_501_dehaan

this should help out 🙂

// the "i" after the pattern delimiter indicates a case-insensitive search
if (preg_match ("/php/i", "PHP is the web scripting language of choice.")) {
    print "A match was found.";
} else {
    print "A match was not found.";
}


// the \b in the pattern indicates a word boundary, so only the distinct
// word "web" is matched, and not a word partial like "webbing" or "cobweb"
if (preg_match ("/\bweb\b/i", "PHP is the web scripting language of choice.")) {
    print "A match was found.";
} else {
    print "A match was not found.";
}
if (preg_match ("/\bweb\b/i", "PHP is the website scripting language of choice.")) {
    print "A match was found.";
} else {
    print "A match was not found.";
}

does that help you out?

what I suggest is reading the www.php.net manual, it will help you with all your problems 🙂

pdaoust

the above is correct, for this reason: PHP isn't as powerful as Perl in character-matching; it doesn't have a 'contains' operator. So you have to use a regexp function like preg_match().

kevmy21

There are a couple of much easier ways you can get the equivalent of a contains operator/function:

strpos() // returns position of first match, or FALSE if not found
substr_count() // returns count of matches, which is 0 if not found

for example:

<?php
if (strpos("Hello world!","wo"))
{
echo "Yep, 'Hello world!' contains 'wo'!";
}
else
{
echo "Does not contain.";
}

if (substr_count("Hello world. The world is nice","world") > 0)
{
echo "Found 'world'!";
}
else
{
echo "'world' not found!";
}

bradgrafelman

kevmy21;10984596 wrote:
for example:

<?php
if (strpos("Hello world!","wo"))
{
echo "Yep, 'Hello world!' contains 'wo'!";
}
else
{
echo "Does not contain.";
}

Careful - that code snippet isn't quite right, since this:

if (strpos("Hello world!","Hello"))
{
echo "Yep, 'Hello world!' contains 'Hello'!";
}
else
{
echo "Does not contain.";
}

will claim that the string 'Hello world!' does not contain 'Hello' in it (the manual page for [man]strpos/man should clue you in as to why that happens).

kevmy21

kevmy21;10984596 wrote:
There are a couple of much easier ways you can get the equivalent of a contains operator/function:

strpos() // returns position of first match, or FALSE if not found
substr_count() // returns count of matches, which is 0 if not found

for example:

<?php
if (strpos("Hello world!","wo")!==false)
{
echo "Yep, 'Hello world!' contains 'wo'!";
}
else
{
echo "Does not contain.";
}

if (substr_count("Hello world. The world is nice","world") > 0)
{
echo "Found 'world'!";
}
else
{
echo "'world' not found!";
}

?>

Right you are. Fixed inline in this quote. You must use !==false just in case your match is at position 0, which is interpreted as boolean false (as in this example).