Replace First Occurrence

[TheMayhem]

Pretty basic question here,

 

I have a string called:

 

$string

 

I want to use a php replace function or whatever would be best to find the first occurence of ] and for the string to delete from ] And everything after that first occurence of ] In the string.

 

Example

 

$string = "Hello Friends [Test] My name is John";

 

After the php function

 

$string "Hello Friends [Test";

[Zane]

$string = preg_replace("@(.*)\]@", $1, "Hello Friends [Test] My name is John");

[fugix]

$string = "Hello Friends [Test] My name is John";
$strpos = strpos($string, ']');
$substr = substr($string,0,$strpos);

should be what you are looking for

[.josh]

$string = array_shift(explode(']',$string));

[.josh]

$string = preg_replace("@(.*)\]@", $1, "Hello Friends [Test] My name is John");

 

This won't work. First off, you need to wrap $1 in quotes in the replace argument.  2nd, this pattern will greedily match everything to the end of the string and then give up characters until it finds a ] so IOW it will actually match for the last occurrence of ] in the string.  And then the $1 will replace everything it matched before that so IOW this pattern just removes the last occurring ] in the string

 

preg_replace approach would be more like "~^([^\]]*).*~"  Basically you have to use a pattern that matches the entire string.  More efficient would be to use preg_match and just match the bit you actually want.  More efficient would be to use other functions like strpos, substr, explode, etc..