Removing text at end of string

bhorenst

Hi,

I have a string that sometimes includes " " at the end and other times doesn't. How would I go about removing the " " at the end when it exists? I've tried using str_replace but there may be other instances of " " that I don't want to remove. I've also tried using subtr() to remove the last 8 characters, but that doesn't work obviously when there is no " ".

I assume there's some regular expression stuff I could do to accomplish this, but that's beyond my very limited skills at the moment.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Krik

You could use substr() to find out if the last 8 characters are and if so then remove them.

nrg_alpha

Perhaps something along the lines of?

$str = 'this is some text!<br><br>';
if(substr($str, -8) == '<br><br>'){
    $str = substr($str, 0, (strlen($str) - 8));
}
echo $str;

dagon

$string=rtrim($string,"<br>");

nrg_alpha

Hmmm.. what was I thinking? Totally forgot about rtrim().
Good call.

NogDog

Except that the rtimr() would also change "tear" to "tea", "purr" to "pu", or "barb" to "ba" should any of those be at the end of the string.

nrg_alpha

NogDog;10905870 wrote:
Except that the rtimr() would also change "tear" to "tea", "purr" to "pu", or "barb" to "ba" should any of those be at the end of the string.

Didn't even realize that till you mentioned it (I'm really not on the ball today to be sure). So then my solution could still work just fine (but I kept checking it see if it can be made simpler / more efficient), and drew a blank. I wasn't happy with using substr twice like that, as it there is a redundant feeling to it. But again, I kept drawing blanks...

bradgrafelman

Another alternative, just to be different:

$str = preg_replace('/(?:<br>)+$/i', '', $str);
echo $str;

Weedpacket

I wasn't happy with using substr twice like that, as it there is a redundant feeling to it.

if(strrpos($str, '<br><br>')==strlen($str)-8)

But I'd stay with substr(), myself. It would be more efficient than potentially searching the entire string when you're only interested in the end (as happens here).

NogDog

Being somewhat cynical by nature these days, I'd probably use a regexp to cover multiple situations:

preg_replace('#(<br\s*/?>\s*)+$#i', '', $text);

😉

nrg_alpha

@ WP:T
Thanks for the sample and substr advice. Nice to see some variations going on.. gets that little hamster in the wheel upstairs running (yesterday, I wasn't exactly the brightest crayon in the box if you catch my drift - I think I was dark purple or something).

@ whoever cares:
I love my preg (in case no one noticed), but I opted to go the substr, strlen and friends route, as it is no secret that those functions out perform preg in the context of raw speed. Granted, preg does offer some serious flexibility. So given the preg route, I would have sided with Nog's, but with a dash of Brad's (Nog's offers more flexibility in detecting say or , while Brad's doesn't bother to capture [as there is no need to] )...

My 'hybrid' preg vote:

preg_replace('#(?:<br\s*/?>\s*)+$#i', '', $text);