preg_replace help

[The_Junior]

Hi folks,

I'm new to regular expressions and have searched through the forums here but haven't found what I'm looking for and could use some help.

Basically, I need to search a string and pull out everything after a comma.

Example:

$name="Shmoe, Joe";

Basically I need to get rid of the last name and just pull out the first name. Any help is appreciated.

[Threehearts]

hi.
$arr_comma_separated_string = explode(", ", $name);

$arr_comma_separated_string[0] is what you want in this case.
Given that surname and first name are indeed separated by commata.

no use to mess with regular expressions unless you have to.

jakob

[The_Junior]

Thanks threehearts! I actually tried this and it seemed to have worked, but it's probably not as efficient as your solution:

$start = strpos($name, ","); // find position of comma
$length = strlen($name); // length of string
$fName = substr($name, $start+1, $length); // text after comma (first name)

Thanks again for your reply.