Php get specific character from string

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

substr — Return part of a string

Description

substr(string $string, int $offset, ?int $length = null): string

Parameters

The input string.

If offset is non-negative, the returned string will start at the offset'th position in string, counting from zero. For instance, in the string 'abcdef', the character at position 0 is 'a', the character at position 2 is 'c', and so forth.

If offset is negative, the returned string will start at the offset'th character from the end of string.

If string is less than offset characters long, an empty string will be returned.

Example #1 Using a negative offset

$rest = substr("abcdef", -1);    // returns "f"
$rest = substr("abcdef", -2);    // returns "ef"
$rest = substr("abcdef", -3, 1); // returns "d"
?>

If length is given and is positive, the string returned will contain at most length characters beginning from offset (depending on the length of string).

If length is given and is negative, then that many characters will be omitted from the end of string (after the start position has been calculated when a offset is negative). If offset denotes the position of this truncation or beyond, an empty string will be returned.

If length is given and is 0, an empty string will be returned.

If length is omitted or null, the substring starting from offset until the end of the string will be returned.

Example #2 Using a negative length

$rest = substr("abcdef", 0, -1);  // returns "abcde"
$rest = substr("abcdef", 2, -1);  // returns "cde"
$rest = substr("abcdef", 4, -4);  // returns ""; prior to PHP 8.0.0, false was returned
$rest = substr("abcdef", -3, -1); // returns "de"
?>

Return Values

Returns the extracted part of string, or an empty string.

Changelog

Examples

Example #3 Basic substr() usage

echo substr('abcdef', 1);     // bcdef
echo substr("abcdef", 1, null); // bcdef; prior to PHP 8.0.0, empty string was returned
echo substr('abcdef', 1, 3);  // bcd
echo substr('abcdef', 0, 4);  // abcd
echo substr('abcdef', 0, 8);  // abcdef
echo substr('abcdef', -1, 1); // f

// Accessing single characters in a string
// can also be achieved using "square brackets"

Example #4 substr() casting behaviour

class apple {
    public function __toString() {
        return "green";
    }
}

echo

The above example will output:

1) 'pe'
2) '54'
3) 'gr'
4) '1'
5) ''
6) ''
7) '1200'

Example #5 Invalid Character Range

If an invalid character range is requested, substr() returns an empty string as of PHP 8.0.0; previously, false was returned instead.

var_dump(substr('a', 2));
?>

Output of the above example in PHP 8:

Output of the above example in PHP 7:

See Also

• strrchr() - Find the last occurrence of a character in a string
• substr_replace() - Replace text within a portion of a string
• preg_match() - Perform a regular expression match
• trim() - Strip whitespace (or other characters) from the beginning and end of a string
• mb_substr() - Get part of string
• wordwrap() - Wraps a string to a given number of characters
• String access and modification by character

Andreas Bur (andreas dot buro at gmail dot com) ¶

13 years ago

For getting a substring of UTF-8 characters, I highly recommend mb_substr

        $utf8string = "cakeæøå";

        echo

biohazard dot ge at gmail dot com ¶

9 years ago

may be by following functions will be easier to extract the needed sub parts from a string:

after ('@', '');
//returns 'online.ge'
//from the first occurrence of '@'before ('@', '');
//returns 'biohazard'
//from the first occurrence of '@'between ('@', '.', '');
//returns 'online'
//from the first occurrence of '@'after_last ('[', 'sin[90]*cos[180]');
//returns '180]'
//from the last occurrence of '['before_last ('[', 'sin[90]*cos[180]');
//returns 'sin[90]*cos['
//from the last occurrence of '['between_last ('[', ']', 'sin[90]*cos[180]');
//returns '180'
//from the last occurrence of '['
?>

here comes the source:

function after ($this, $inthat)
    {
        if (!is_bool(strpos($inthat, $this)))
        return substr($inthat, strpos($inthat,$this)+strlen($this));
    };

    function

bleakwind at msn dot com ¶

17 years ago

This returns the portion of str specified by the start and length parameters..
It can performs multi-byte safe on number of characters. like mb_strcut() ...

Note:
1.Use it like this bite_str(string str, int start, int length [,byte of on string]);
2.First character's position is 0. Second character position is 1, and so on...
3.$byte is one character length of your encoding, For example: utf-8 is "3", gb2312 and big5 is "2"...you can use the function strlen() get it...
Enjoy it :) ...

--- Bleakwind
QQ:940641
http://www.weaverdream.com

PS:I'm sorry my english is too poor... :(

// String intercept By Bleakwind
// utf-8:$byte=3 | gb2312:$byte=2 | big5:$byte=2
function bite_str($string, $start, $len, $byte=3)
{
    $str     = "";
    $count   = 0;
    $str_len = strlen($string);
    for ($i=0; $i<$str_len; $i++) {
        if (($count+1-$start)>$len) {
            $str  .= "...";
            break;
        } elseif ((ord(substr($string,$i,1)) <= 128) && ($count < $start)) {
            $count++;
        } elseif ((ord(substr($string,$i,1)) > 128) && ($count < $start)) {
            $count = $count+2;
            $i     = $i+$byte-1;
        } elseif ((ord(substr($string,$i,1)) <= 128) && ($count >= $start)) {
            $str  .= substr($string,$i,1);
            $count++;
        } elseif ((ord(substr($string,$i,1)) > 128) && ($count >= $start)) {
            $str  .= substr($string,$i,$byte);
            $count = $count+2;
            $i     = $i+$byte-1;
        }
    }
    return $str;
}// Test
$str = "123456???ֽ?123456?ַ???123456??ȡ????";
for($i=0;$i<30;$i++){
    echo "
".bite_str($str,$i,20);   
}
?>

greg at apparel dot com ¶

8 years ago

Coming to PHP from classic ASP I am used to the Left() and Right() functions built into ASP so I did a quick PHPversion. hope these help someone else making the switch

function left($str, $length) {
    return substr($str, 0, $length);
}

function right($str, $length) {
    return substr($str, -$length);
}

pugazhenthi k ¶

9 years ago

### SUB STRING  BY WORD USING substr() and strpos()  #####

### THIS SCRIPT WILL RETURN PART OF STRING  WITHOUT WORD BREAK ###

nikolai dot wuestemann at t-online dot de ¶

11 years ago

If you want to have a string BETWEEN two strings, just use this function:

function get_between($input, $start, $end)
{
  $substr = substr($input, strlen($start)+strpos($input, $start), (strlen($input) - strpos($input, $end))*(-1));
  return $substr;
} //Example: $string = "123456789";
$a = "12";
$b = "9";

echo

Petez ¶

15 years ago

I wanted to work out the fastest way to get the first few characters from a string, so I ran the following experiment to compare substr, direct string access and strstr:

/* substr access */
beginTimer();
for ($i = 0; $i < 1500000; $i++){
    $opening = substr($string,0,11);
    if ($opening == 'Lorem ipsum'){
        true;
    }else{
        false;
    }
}
$endtime1 = endTimer();/* direct access */
beginTimer();
for ($i = 0; $i < 1500000; $i++){
    if ($string[0] == 'L' && $string[1] == 'o' && $string[2] == 'r' && $string[3] == 'e' && $string[4] == 'm' && $string[5] == ' ' && $string[6] == 'i' && $string[7] == 'p' && $string[8] == 's' && $string[9] == 'u' && $string[10] == 'm'){
        true;
    }else{
        false;
    }
}
$endtime2 = endTimer();/* strstr access */
beginTimer();
for ($i = 0; $i < 1500000; $i++){
    $opening = strstr($string,'Lorem ipsum');
    if ($opening == true){
        true;
    }else{
        false;
    }
}
$endtime3 = endTimer();

echo

gkhelloworld at gmail dot com ¶

13 years ago

Shortens the filename and its expansion has seen.

$file = "Hellothisfilehasmorethan30charactersandthisfayl.exe";

function

kaysar in ymail in com ¶

13 years ago

Drop extensions of a file (even from a file location string)

$filename

Anonymous ¶

4 years ago

Be aware of a slight inconsistency between substr and mb_substr

mb_substr("", 4);      returns empty string

substr("", 4);              returns boolean false

tested in PHP 7.1.11 (Fedora 26) and PHP 5.4.16 (CentOS 7.4)

link ¶

13 years ago

I created some functions for entity-safe splitting+lengthcounting:

function strlen_entities($text)
{
    preg_match_all(
        '/((?:&(?:#[0-9]{2,}|[a-z]{2,});)|(?:[^&])|'.        
        '(?:&(?!\w;)))s',$text,$textarray);
    return count($textarray[0]);
} 
function substr_entities($text,$start,$limit=0)
{
    $return = '';
    preg_match_all(
        '/((?:&(?:#[0-9]{2,}|[a-z]{2,});)|(?:[^&])|'.        
        '(?:&(?!\w;)))s',$text,$textarray);
    $textarray = $textarray[0];
    $numchars = count($textarray)-1;
    if ($start>=$numchars)
        return false;
    if ($start<0)
    {
        $start = ($numchars)+$start+1;
    }
    if ($start>=0)
    {
        if ($limit==0)
        {
            $end=$numchars;
        }
        elseif ($limit>0)
        {
            $end = $start+($limit-1);
        }
        else
        {
            $end = ($numchars)+$limit;
        }

        for (

pheagey at gmail dot com ¶

10 years ago

Using a 0 as the last parameter for substr().

As per examples
= substr($var, 4); ?>

works no problem. However
= substr($var, 4, 0); ?>

will get you nothing. Just a quick heads up

Cristianlf ¶

11 years ago

I needed a function like lpad from oracle, or right from SQL
then I use this code :

function right($string,$chars)
{
    $vright = substr($string, strlen($string)-$chars,$chars);
    return $vright;

    }

    echo

fanfatal at fanfatal dot pl ¶

17 years ago

Hmm ... this is a script I wrote, whitch is very similar to substr, but it isn't takes html and bbcode for counting and it takes portion of string and show avoided (html & bbcode) tags too ;]
Specially usefull for show part of serach result included html and bbcode tags

/**
* string csubstr ( string string, int start [, int length] )
*
* @author FanFataL
* @param string string
* @param int start
* @param [int length]
* @return string
*/
function csubstr($string, $start, $length=false) {
    $pattern = '/(\[\w+[^\]]*?\]|\[\/\w+\]|<\w+[^>]*?>|<\/\w+>)/i';
    $clean = preg_replace($pattern, chr(1), $string);
    if(!$length)
        $str = substr($clean, $start);
    else {
        $str = substr($clean, $start, $length);
        $str = substr($clean, $start, $length + substr_count($str, chr(1)));
    }
    $pattern = str_replace(chr(1),'(.*?)',preg_quote($str));
    if(preg_match('/'.$pattern.'/is', $string, $matched))
        return $matched[0];
    return $string;
} ?>

Using this is similar to simple substr.

Greatings ;]
...

fatihmertdogancan at hotmail dot com ¶

8 years ago

[English]
I created python similar accesing list or string with php substr & strrev functions.

Use: str($string,$pattern)

About the python pattern,
http://docs.python.org/release/1.5.1p1/tut/strings.html
http://effbot.org/zone/python-list.htm

About of pattern structures
[start:stop:step]

Example,
$s = "fatihmertdogancan";
echo str($s,"1:9:-2");
echo "
";
echo str($s,"1:-3:-2");
echo "
";
echo str($s,"1:-11:-5");
echo "
";
echo str($s,"1:9:4");
?>

Output,
thetoacn
eht
aom
htan

This is function phpfiddle link: http://phpfiddle.org/main/code/e82-y5d

or source;

    function str($str,$pattern){
        //[start:stop:step]
        //pattern ->            ([-]?[0-9]*|\s):([-]?[0-9]*|\s):([-]?[0-9]*|\s)
        preg_match("/([-]?[0-9]*|\s?):([-]?[0-9]*|\s?):?([-]?[0-9]*|\s?)/", $pattern, $yakala);
        $start = $yakala[1];
        $stop = $yakala[2];
        $step = $yakala[3];

                if(empty(

egingell at sisna dot com ¶

15 years ago

/**
* string substrpos(string $str, mixed $start [[, mixed $end], boolean $ignore_case])
*
* If $start is a string, substrpos will return the string from the position of the first occuring $start to $end
*
* If $end is a string, substrpos will return the string from $start to the position of the first occuring $end
*
* If the first character in (string) $start or (string) $end is '-', the last occuring string will be used.
*
* If $ignore_case is true, substrpos will not care about the case.
* If $ignore_case is false (or anything that is not (boolean) true, the function will be case sensitive.
*        Both of the above: only applies if either $start or $end are strings.
*
* echo substrpos('This is a string with 0123456789 numbers in it.', 5, '5');
*        // Prints 'is a string with 01234';
*
* echo substrpos('This is a string with 0123456789 numbers in it.', '5', 5);
*        // Prints '56789'
*
* echo substrpos('This is a string with 0123456789 numbers in it and two strings.', -60, '-string')
*        // Prints 's is a string with 0123456789 numbers in it and two '
*
* echo substrpos('This is a string with 0123456789 numbers in it and two strings.', -60, '-STRING', true)
*        // Prints 's is a string with 0123456789 numbers in it and two '
*
* echo substrpos('This is a string with 0123456789 numbers in it and two strings.', -60, '-STRING', false)
*        // Prints 's is a string with 0123456789 numbers in it and two strings.'
*
* Warnings:
*        Since $start and $end both take either a string or an integer:
*            If the character or string you are searching $str for is a number, pass it as a quoted string.
*        If $end is (integer) 0, an empty string will be returned.
*        Since this function takes negative strings ('-search_string'):
*            If the string your using in $start or $end is a '-' or begins with a '-' escape it with a '\'.
*            This only applies to the *first* character of $start or $end.
*/

// Define stripos() if not defined (PHP < 5).

mar dot czapla at gmail dot com ¶

13 years ago

Here we have gr8 function which simply convert ip address to a number using substr with negative offset.
You can need it if you want to compare some IP addresses converted to a numbers.
For example when using ip2country, or eliminating same range of ip addresses from your website :D

function ip2no($val)
{   
    list($A,$B,$C,$D)    =    explode(".",$val);
    return
        substr("000".$A,-3).
        substr("000".$B,-3).
        substr("000".$C,-3).
        substr("000".$D,-3);
} $min        =    ip2no("10.11.1.0");
$max        =    ip2no("111.11.1.0");
$visitor    =    ip2no("105.1.20.200");

if(

slow at acedsl dot com ¶

11 years ago

Anyone coming from the Python world will be accustomed to making substrings by using a "slice index" on a string.  The following function emulates basic Python string slice behavior. (A more elaborate version could be made to support array input as well as string, and the optional third "step" argument.)

function py_slice($input, $slice) {
    $arg = explode(':', $slice);
    $start = intval($arg[0]);
    if ($start < 0) {
        $start += strlen($input);
    }
    if (count($arg) === 1) {
        return substr($input, $start, 1);
    }
    if (trim($arg[1]) === '') {
        return substr($input, $start);
    }
    $end = intval($arg[1]);
    if ($end < 0) {
        $end += strlen($input);
    }
    return substr($input, $start, $end - $start);
}

print

Quicker ¶

11 years ago

If you need to parse utf-8 strings char by char, try this one:

     $utf8marker=chr(128);
     $count=0;
     while(isset($string{$count})){
       if($string{$count}>=$utf8marker) {
         $parsechar=substr($string,$count,2);
         $count+=2;
       } else {
         $parsechar=$string{$count};
         $count++;
       }
       /* do what you like with parsechar ... , eg.:*/  echo $parsechar."
\r\n";
     }
?>

- it works without mb_substr
- it is fast, because it grabs characters based on indexes  when possible and avoids any count and split functions

php_net at thomas dot trella dot de ¶

17 years ago

I needed to cut a string after x chars at a  html converted utf-8 text (for example Japanese text like 嬰謰弰脰欰罏).
The problem was, the different length of the signs, so I wrote the following function to handle that.
Perhaps it helps.

function html_cutstr ($str, $len)
{
    if (!preg_match('/\&#[0-9]*;.*/i', $str))
    {
        $rVal = strlen($str, $len);
        break;
    }$chars = 0;
    $start = 0;
    for($i=0; $i < strlen($str); $i++)
    {
        if ($chars >= $len)
        break;$str_tmp = substr($str, $start, $i-$start);
        if (preg_match('/\&#[0-9]*;.*/i', $str_tmp))
        {
            $chars++;
            $start = $i;
        }
    }
    $rVal = substr($str, 0, $start);
    if (strlen($str) > $start)
    $rVal .= " ...";
    return $rVal;
}
?>

leon weidauer ¶

11 years ago

When using a value of a wrong type as second parameter , substr() does not return FALSE but NULL although the docs say, it should return FALSE on error.

Prior to PHP 5.3, substr() tries to cast the second parameter to int and doesn't throw any errors. Since PHP 5.3 a warning is thrown.

post [at] jannik - zappe [dot] de ¶

14 years ago

Just a little function to cut a string by the wanted amount. Works in both directions.

function cutString($str, $amount = 1, $dir = "right")
{
  if(($n = strlen($str)) > 0)
  {
    if($dir == "right")
    {
      $start = 0;
      $end = $n-$amount;
    } elseif( $dir == "left") {
      $start = $amount;
      $end = $n;
    }

        return

vnonov at gmail dot com / Viktor Nonov ¶

12 years ago

//removes string from the end of otherfunction removeFromEnd($string, $stringToRemove) {
    $stringToRemoveLen = strlen($stringToRemove);
    $stringLen = strlen($string);$pos = $stringLen - $stringToRemoveLen;$out = substr($string, 0, $pos);

    return

robinhood70 at live dot ca ¶

1 year ago

Prior to PHP 8, specifying length with zero-length strings or non-string values as input can produce potentially unexpected results.

foreach (['normal', '', true, false, NULL] as $value) {
    echo gettype(substr($value, 0, 10)) . ' ' . substr($value, 0, 10);
}/*
string normal
boolean
string 1
boolean
boolean
*/
?>

webmaster at oehoeboeroe dot nl ¶

13 years ago

You might expect substr('123456', 6) to return an empty string. Instead it returns boolean FALSE.

This behavior should be mentioned in the Return Values section of the manual. Instead it is only mentioned in the Parameters section.

If you need an empty string instead of a boolean FALSE you should typecast the result to a string.

$a = substr('123456', 6);              // equivalent to $a = FALSE
$a = (string) substr('123456', 6);   // equivalent to $a = '';
?>

Bradley from California ¶

16 years ago

Add on to (a function originally written by) "Matias from Argentina": str_format_number function.

Just added handling of $String shorter then $Format by adding a side to start the fill and a string length to the while loop.

function str_format_number($String, $Format, $Start = 'left'){
    //If we want to fill from right to left incase string is shorter then format
    if ($Start == 'right') {
        $String = strrev($String);
        $Format = strrev($Format);
    }
    if($Format == '') return $String;
    if($String == '') return $String;   
    $Result = '';
    $FormatPos = 0;
    $StringPos = 0;
    while ((strlen($Format) - 1) >= $FormatPos && strlen($String) > $StringPos) {
        //If its a number => stores it
        if (is_numeric(substr($Format, $FormatPos, 1))) {
            $Result .= substr($String, $StringPos, 1);
            $StringPos++;
            //If it is not a number => stores the caracter
        } else {
            $Result .= substr($Format, $FormatPos, 1);
        }
        //Next caracter at the mask.
        $FormatPos++;
    }
    if ($Start == 'right') $Result = strrev($Result);
    return $Result;
}
?>

frank at jkelloggs dot dk ¶

17 years ago

Regarding the utf8_substr function from lmak: The pattern '/./u' doesn't match newline characters. This means that the substring from 0 to the total length of the string will miss the number of characters in the end matching the number of newlines in the string. To fix this one can add the s modifier (PCRE_DOTALL) in the pattern:

function utf8_substr($str,$start)
{
   preg_match_all("/./su", $str, $ar);

   if(

link ¶

13 years ago

And as always there is bound to be a bug:

function strlen_entities($text)
{
    preg_match_all(
        '/((?:&(?:#[0-9]{2,}|[a-z]{2,});)|(?:[^&])|'.       
        '(?:&(?!\w;)))s',$text,$textarray);
    return count($textarray[0]);
}
function substr_entities($text,$start,$limit=0)
{
    $return = '';
    preg_match_all(
        '/((?:&(?:#[0-9]{2,}|[a-z]{2,});)|(?:[^&])|'.       
        '(?:&(?!\w;)))s',$text,$textarray);
    $textarray = $textarray[0];
    $numchars = count($textarray)-1;
    if ($start>=$numchars)
        return false;
    if ($start<0)
    {
        $start = ($numchars)+$start+1;
    }
    if ($start>=0)
    {
        if ($limit==0)
        {
            $end=$numchars;
        }
        elseif ($limit>0)
        {
            $end = $start+($limit-1);
        }
        else
        {
            $end = ($numchars)+$limit;
        }

        for (

ivanhoe011 at gmail dot com ¶

17 years ago

If you need just a single character from the string you don't need to use substr(), just use curly braces notation:

    // both lines will output the 3rd character
    echo substr($my_string, 2, 1);
    echo $my_string{2}; 
?>

curly braces syntax is faster and more readable IMHO..

rob NOSPAM at clancentric dot net ¶

17 years ago

I have developed a function with a similar outcome to jay's

Checks if the last character is or isnt a space. (does it the normal way if it is)
It explodes the string into an array of seperate works, the effect is... it chops off anything after and including the last space.

function limit_string($string, $charlimit)
{
    if(substr($string,$charlimit-1,1) != ' ')
    {
        $string = substr($string,'0',$charlimit);
        $array = explode(' ',$string);
        array_pop($array);
        $new_string = implode(' ',$array);

        return

woutermb at gmail dot com ¶

17 years ago

Well this is a script I wrote, what it does is chop up long words with malicious meaning into several parts. This way, a chat in a table will not get stretched anymore.

function text($string,$limit=20,$chop=10){$text = explode(" ",$string);
while(list($key, $value) = each($text)){
    $length = strlen($value);
    if($length >=20){
        for($i=0;$i<=$length;$i+=10){
            $new .= substr($value, $i, 10);
            $new .= " ";
        }
         $post .= $new;
    }
    elseif($length <=15){
        $post .= $value;
    }
    $post .= " ";
}
return($post);
}// for example, this would return:
$output = text("Well this text doesn't get cut up, yet thisssssssssssssssssssssssss one does.", 10, 5);

echo(

kriskra at gmail dot com ¶

14 years ago

The javascript charAt equivalent in php of felipe has a little bug. It's necessary to compare the type (implicit) aswell or the function returns a wrong result:
function charAt($str,$pos) {
    return (substr($str,$pos,1) !== false) ? substr($str,$pos,1) : -1;
}
?>

steve at unicycle dot co dot nz ¶

17 years ago

To quickly trim an optional trailing slash off the end of a path name:

if (substr( $path, -1 ) == '/') $path = substr( $path, 0, -1 );

Nadeem ¶

8 years ago

Truncate a float number. Similar to the Excel trunc function.

function truncate_number($val,$decimals=2){$number=array();
        $number=explode(".",$val);           
        $result=0;

        if (

m.m.j.kronenburg ¶

6 years ago

/**
  * Returns and extracts the portion of string specified by the
  * start and length parameters from the original string.
  *
  * This function is simulair to function substr() except that it
  * removes the substring from the orignal string
  * (passed by reference).
  *
  * @param string $string      The input string.
  * @param integer $start      The start position (see substr() for
  *                            explanation).
  * @param integer $length     The length (see substr()
  *                            for explanation).
  * @return mixed              The substring or FALSE (see substr()
  *                            for explanation).
  **/
function substrex(&$string, $start, $length = PHP_INT_MAX)
{
  if($start > strlen($string)) { return false; }
  if(empty($length))           { return ''; }
  if($start < 0) { $start = max(0, $start + strlen($string)); }
  $end = ($length < 0) ?
    strlen($string) + $length :
    min(strlen($string), $start + $length);
  if($end < $start) { return false; }
  $length = $end - $start;
  $substr = substr($string, $start, $length);
  $string = substr($string, 0, $start).substr($string, $end); 
  return $substr;
}?>

man13or at hotmail dot fr ¶

2 years ago

Shortcuts :

Getting the first character of a string
substr($string, 1)

Getting the last character of a string
substr($string, -1)

Remove the first character of a string
substr($string,1)

Remove the last character of a string
substr($string, 0, -1)