Help needed with finding the first occurence of a number

[AdRock]

I have made a function that takes the first part of a postcode and assigns it to a region.

 

The function works perfectly apart from if the postcode begins with 1 letter and then a number as my function is looking for 2 starting letters.

 

When a postocde is entered such as E7 5RS the function does't find E7 so nothing is returned

 

I was thinking about having a second part of the function so if the first 2 characters are letters then do these or do the others.

 

How would i check the first part of the postcode to see where the first number occurs so if it occurs at position 2 it is a 2 letter postcode and if it occurs at postion 1 it's a single letter postcode

 

function getPostcode($postcode) {

$postcode = substr($postcode, 0, 2);

$scotland = array('AB', 'DD', 'DG', 'EH', 'FK', 'G', 'HS', 'IV', 'KA', 'KW', 'KY', 'ML', 'PA', 'PH', 'TD', 'ZE');
$ireland = array('BT');
$northwest = array('BB','BL','CA','CH','CW','FY','IM','L','LA','M','OL','PR','SK','SY','TF','WA','WN');
$northeast = array('BD', 'DH', 'DL', 'DN', 'HD', 'HG', 'HU', 'HX', 'LA', 'LS', 'NE', 'S', 'SR', 'TS', 'WF', 'YO');
$midlands = array('B', 'CV', 'DE', 'DY', 'LE', 'NN', 'NG', 'ST', 'WS', 'WV');
$anglia = array('AL', 'CB', 'CM', 'CO', 'EN', 'IG', 'IP', 'LU', 'MK', 'NR', 'PE', 'RM', 'SG', 'SS', 'WD');
$london = array('E', 'EC', 'N', 'NW', 'SE', 'SW', 'W', 'WC');
$southwest = array('BA', 'BH', 'BS', 'DT', 'EX', 'GL', 'HR', 'PL', 'TA', 'TQ', 'TR', 'WR');
$southcentral = array('GU', 'GY', 'HA', 'HP', 'JE', 'OX', 'PO', 'RG', 'SL', 'SN', 'SO', 'SP', 'UB');
$southeast = array('BN', 'BR', 'CT', 'CR', 'DA', 'KT', 'ME', 'RH', 'SM', 'TN', 'TW');

if(in_array($postcode, $scotland)) {
	return "scotland";
}
if(in_array($postcode, $ireland)) {
	return "northern-ireland";
}
if(in_array($postcode, $northwest)) {
	return "north-west";
}
if(in_array($postcode, $northeast)) {
	return "north-east";
}
if(in_array($postcode, $midlands)) {
	return "midlands";
}
if(in_array($postcode, $anglia)) {
	return "anglia";
}
if(in_array($postcode, $london)) {
	return "london";
}
if(in_array($postcode, $southwest)) {
	return "south-west";
}
if(in_array($postcode, $southcentral)) {
	return "south-central";
}
if(in_array($postcode, $southeast)) {
	return "south-east";
}
}

[Kieran Menor]

Perhaps is_numeric($postcode{0}), is_numeric($postcode{1}), etc.

[AdRock]

Perhaps is_numeric($postcode{0}), is_numeric($postcode{1}), etc.

 

Can you expand on that a bit more please?  I'm not sure what you mean.