[RESOLVED] Extract from a string

zzz

:bemused: I have a string of text that has similar format to this:

ASASA: Aasasasas a sas as as as asas

The string can change slightly at the beginning, it could be 4-5 chars folllowed by a colon [:], then space and a few more words. I need to be able to extract only the first ABBREVIATION (everything before :). I was thinking of doing substr first # cras but it probably won't work since the number of innitial chars will change slightly. What are the other options?

execute

use the function explode

<?php
$somestring = "ASASA: ASASASA";
$array = explode(":", $somestring);
echo $array[0];  // ECHOES "ASASA" meaning everything behind the colon.
echo "<br>".array[1]; // echoes the rest
?>

Shrike

If your absolutely sure that the first colon will mark the end of the bit you want, you could use substr() and strpos() to get what you need.

$substr = substr( $string, 0, strpos( ':', $string ));

zzz

Shrike, I like that substring solution but for some reason it doesn't work... I did put my string into $string = "MY: long string to work with";

zzz

execute, your suggestion made me thing of something else. Currently I have these strings from an array into a drop-down menu. I'd like to allow multiple select. suppose I could then implode it all before storing into a db, and then explode it back before the output on the page, right. Going back to the earlier issue, stripping only the part before colon, which i think I'd like to get to work using substr... how would I do it for a multiple strings and put the stripped values while separating them with a commas?

Gee I'd snowballing my problems am I not?

Shrike

zzz wrote:
Shrike, I like that substring solution but for some reason it doesn't work... I did put my string into $string = "MY: long string to work with";

Sorry - blame Zend for not having consistent parameter lists 😉

$substr = substr( $string, 0, strpos( $string, ':' ));

zzz

Perfect!