Trim postcode like "m1 4bu" to "m1"

[powelly]

I need to trim a postcode held in a string to the first space.

 

ie

 

m1 4bu becomes m1

ol8 9ez becomes ol8

ec3 9dz becomes ec3

 

I know i could use subsrt if it was always the same number of characters but this can vary so im unsure. I looked at trim but that seems to be for whitespaces at the front or back.

[taith]

not tested... but it should grab the first space, and cut all after it...

 

$key='m1 4bu ';
$shrunk=substr($key,0,strpos($key,' '));

[jitesh]

$key='m1 4bu ';
$shrunk=explode(" ",$key);

echo $shrunk[0];

[Barand]

list($post_code_area) = explode(' ', $postcode);

[powelly]

list($post_code_area) = explode(' ', $postcode);

 

Thanks that worked, However its now introduced a new problem, what if the user does not enter a space in the postcode!

[taith]

then theres no way of knowing wether the 1st section is 2 or 3 characters long...

[Barand]

Is the last section always 3 chars, or do some postcodes have format something like L3 11BU?

[powelly]

Is the last section always 3 chars, or do some postcodes have format something like L3 11BU?

 

not sure

 

Im looking at this http://javascript.internet.com/forms/uk-postcode-validation.html at the moment with the view to validating the postcode before submitting it so that way I only have to trim valid postcodes

[powelly]

just spotted this "The inward code, the part to the right of the gap, must always be 3 characters"

 

so if there is no space I can lose the last 3 characters!

[ToonMariner]

All post codes end in NUMBER LETTER LETTER so all you need is to strip the last 3 characters and then trim any white space..

<?php
$postcode = 'yourstring';

$temp = trim($postcode);
$code = substr(($temp, 0 ,strlen($temp) - 3);
$code = trim($code);
?>

[MadTechie]

what about

 

<?php
$subject = "m1 4bu becomes m1
ol8 9ez becomes ol8
ec3 9dz becomes ec3";
$result = preg_replace('#(\w{1,2}\d{1})\s\d{1,2}\w{1,2}#i', '$1', $subject);
echo $result;
?>

 

EDIT: corrected

[ToonMariner]

or

 

<?php
$postcode = 'yourstring';
$result = preg_replace('/(.*)?([0-9][a-zA-Z]{2})$/', $1,trim($postcode))
?>