Detecting if a string has a certain character?

[rottenpixies]

Is there any sort of function to be able to go through a string and return if there is a certain character in it.

 

I have a variable for a persons name but and i need to know if there is a space between there name or not.

[quickstopman]

preg_match()

ereg()

and eregi()

all do that

 

[taith]

if(ereg(' ',$string)) echo 'you have spaces';

else echo 'no spaces!';

[trq]

Best to use strpos for simple searches.

[wildteen88]

use a simple regex pattern to find spaces within a string:

$name = 'rotten pixies';

if(preg_match('/[\s]/', $name))
{
    echo 'Your name contains spaces. This is an invalid character to be used';
}

 

If you want to block other characters, such as underscores (_), pipes (|), astricks (*), etc... Then you can change the the pattern to this: '/[\s_|*]/' add as many characters as you like between the square brackets for characters you wish to disallowed.

 

[GingerRobot]

Thorpe is right here - if you're just checking to see if a character exists in a string, use strpos() - it's faster.

[neel_basu]

Ya I agree with thorpe

if(strpos($string, 'c'))

{

//Yes

}

else

{

//No

}

//Assuming that teh Character is c

[rottenpixies]

I don't know if I was using them incorrectly but the only function that worked was taiths script with the ereg function.

if(ereg(' ',$string)) echo 'you have spaces';
else echo 'no spaces!';

 

Much appreciate the quick response from everyone, you guys are great here!!

[taith]

YAY ME!

[redarrow]

wildteen metod is best for spaces but other then that for a quick haystack find strpos i say.