simple search within string problem

dugawug

problem example:

$string = '123,456,789';
$find = strchr($string, '12');
echo($find);

the echo outputs the whole $string (123,456,789) telling me it found my substring of '12'. this i don't want. i want it to search each comma delimited value independently. meaning above, it would have not returned any value but if the string were changed to this:

$string = '12,123,456,789';

then, yes, it would find the value '12'.
i'm new to PHP. any ideas? a different function?

drew010

$string = '123,456,789';
$parts = explode(",", $string);

foreach($parts as $one) {
    if(strpos($one, '12') !== FALSE) {
        echo "Found 12";
        break;
    }
}

note: this will still say it found 12 if inside a comma there is 123 or 125. if you only want to match 12 itself where 12,353,395 matches but something ilke 15,123,395 doesnt, you will need to use a function like preg_match.

dugawug

Originally posted by drew010

note: this will still say it found 12 if inside a comma there is 123 or 125. if you only want to match 12 itself where 12,353,395 matches but something ilke 15,123,395 doesnt, you will need to use a function like preg_match.

thanks for the reply. yes, i would need a function like preg_match then. i'm going over it right now, but don't see how you would use it in this scenario?

drew010

in this case it would be really easy.
preg_match("/^12$/", $value);

dugawug

hmmm, i'm realizing how much of a newbie i still am to PHP, thanks but let me ask you two quick things:

for one, why would this return 0? shouldn't it return a 1 meaning it found a match?:

$test = "12,123,456,789";
$find = preg_match("/^12$/", $test);
echo($find);

second, what does all the "/^...$/" stuff signify?
thanks

drew010

the reason it returns 0 is because it is looking for "12" not 123 or 312, just 12. you will need to use it with the foreach loop i showed before, just replace this with the strpos thing.
the /^ denotes the beginning of a string and the $/ denotes the end of a string. see http://php.net/manual/en/pcre.pattern.syntax.php for more detailed regular expression info.

dugawug

Drew,
u kick ass!
thanks, you've made my day
d

drew010

glad i was of help 🙂