[SOLVED] How to use Substr

[ksduded]

I want to check for the word CATEGORY: inside a string which can be CATEGORY: ITEM

and remove the word CATEGORY: leaving only ITEM inside the string....

 

In case the string does not have CATEGORY: before listing the ITEM then nothing happens...

 

Thanks

[Alex]

If I understand you correctly you'd probably want to use explode()

 

ex:

 

<?php
$str = 'CATEGORY: ITEM';
echo next(explode(': ', $str)); // ITEM

 

In case you were wondering: next() is only ultized in my example to grab the second element (index of 1) of the array returned by explode(). Because the default array pointer is 0, so using next() increments that to 1 then returns that element. So it would be no different than doing:

<?php
$str = 'CATEGORY: ITEM';
$arr = explode(': ', $str);
echo $arr[1];

[lemmin]

You could just preg_replace to just replace the string with nothing:

$string = preg_replace("/CATEGORY:/", null, $string);

 

http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.preg-replace.php

[ksduded]

$str = 'CATEGORY: ITEM';

echo next(explode(': ', $str)); // ITEM[/code]

 

Thanks, this worked for me to an extent. However, I want to first check whether the string has CATEGORY: in it before exploding it.... if it does not, then it can move ahead....

 

This is what I am doing

 

 

$str = $title;
$title = next(explode(': ', $str));

 

$title has the string... it can be either ITEM or CATEGORY: ITEM (and it keeps on changing according to the different web page), so ideally i would first check for CATEGORY: inside the title, and if found then only do the explode function.... how do I go about that.

[Alex]

You can use:

 

echo (strpos($str, 'CATEGORY: ') !== false) ? next(explode(': ', $str)) : $str;

Basically what it does is check to see if 'CATEGORY: ' is found inside $str using strpos(). If it does then it explodes and gets ITEM out of it, like in my previous example. If not it just echoes $str

[Daniel0]

In case you were wondering: next() is only ultized in my example to grab the second element (index of 1) of the array returned by explode().

 

An alternate way of doing that would be

list(, $title) = explode(': ', $str);

[ksduded]

You can use:

 

echo (strpos($str, 'CATEGORY: ') !== false) ? next(explode(': ', $str)) : $str;

Basically what it does is check to see if 'CATEGORY: ' is found inside $str using strpos(). If it does then it explodes and gets ITEM out of it, like in my previous example. If not it just echoes $str

 

Ok, I am being a complete noob here, but I don't want the echo out the result. Just store it in the $str variable.

 

Otherwise it is working out perfectly. Thanks

[Alex]

Then just change echo to $str =

$str = (strpos($str, 'CATEGORY: ') !== false) ? next(explode(': ', $str)) : $str;

[salathe]

Here are three more variations on the theme. They all take the variable $str and chomp off the "CATEGORY: " prefix if there is one. The first two require the prefix to be at the start of the string.

 

$str = "CATEGORY: ITEM";

// If prefix exists for string, remove it.
$prefix = "CATEGORY: ";
if (strpos($str, $prefix) === 0) {
    $out = substr($str, strlen($prefix));
}

// Same as above
$out = preg_replace("/^CATEGORY: /", "", $str);

// (Almost) same as above
$out = str_replace("CATEGORY: ", "", $str);

[ksduded]

Then just change echo to $str =

$str = (strpos($str, 'CATEGORY: ') !== false) ? next(explode(': ', $str)) : $str;

 

VOILA!!! ITs working ... thanks

[ksduded]

wow you guys are great... thanks for all the suggestions..... I was banging my head on the wall before I came here..