Remove portion of a string after a certain charact

Question

I'm just wondering how I could remove everything after a certain substring in PHP

ex:

Posted On April 6th By Some Dude

I'd like to have it so that it removes all the text including, and after, the sub string "By"

Thanks

Answer 1

$variable = substr($variable, 0, strpos($variable, "By"));

In plain english: Give me the part of the string starting at the beginning and ending at the position where you first encounter the deliminator.

Answer 2

Why...

This is likely overkill for most people's needs, but, it addresses a number of things that each individual answer above does not. Of the items it addresses, three of them were needed for my needs. With tight bracketing and dropping the comments, this could still remain readable at only 13 lines of code.

This addresses the following:

• Performance impact of using REGEX vs strrpos/strstr/strripos/stristr.
• Using strripos/strrpos when character/string not found in string.
• Removing from left or right side of string (first or last occurrence) .
• CaSe Sensitivity.
• Wanting the ability to return back the original string unaltered if search char/string not found.

Usage:

Send original string, search char/string, "R"/"L" for start on right or left side, true/false for case sensitivity. For example, search for "here" case insensitive, in string, start right side.

echo TruncStringAfterString("Now Here Are Some Words Here Now","here","R",false);

Output would be "Now Here Are Some Words ". Changing the "R" to an "L" would output: "Now ".

Here's the function:

function TruncStringAfterString($origString,$truncChar,$startSide,$caseSensitive)
{
    if ($caseSensitive==true && strstr($origString,$truncChar)!==false)
    {
        // IF START RIGHT SIDE:
        if (strtoupper($startSide)=="R" || $startSide==false)
        {   // Found, strip off all chars from truncChar to end
            return substr($origString,0,strrpos($origString,$truncChar));
        }

        // IF START LEFT SIDE: 
        elseif (strtoupper($startSide)=="L" || $startSide="" || $startSide==true)
        {   // Found, strip off all chars from truncChar to end
            return strstr($origString,$truncChar,true);
        }           
    }
    elseif ($caseSensitive==false && stristr($origString,$truncChar)!==false)
    {           
        // IF START RIGHT SIDE: 
        if (strtoupper($startSide)=="R" || $startSide==false)
        {   // Found, strip off all chars from truncChar to end
            return substr($origString,0,strripos($origString,$truncChar));
        }

        // IF START LEFT SIDE: 
        elseif (strtoupper($startSide)=="L" || $startSide="" || $startSide==true)
        {   // Found, strip off all chars from truncChar to end
            return stristr($origString,$truncChar,true);
        }
    }       
    else
    {   // NOT found - return origString untouched
        return $origString;     // Nothing to do here
    }           

}

Answer 3

If you're using PHP 5.3+ take a look at the $before_needle flag of strstr()

$s = 'Posted On April 6th By Some Dude';
echo strstr($s, 'By', true);

Answer 4

You could do:

$posted = preg_replace('/ By.*/', '', $posted);
echo $posted;

Answer 5

$variable = substr($initial, 0, strpos($initial, "By"));

if (!empty($variable)) { echo $variable; } else { echo $initial; }

Answer 6

Try this.

function strip_after_string($str,$char)
    {
        $pos=strpos($str,$char);    
        if ($pos!==false) 
        {
            //$char was found, so return everything up to it.
            return substr($str,0,$pos);
        } 
        else 
        {
            //this will return the original string if $char is not found.  if you wish to return a blank string when not found, just change $str to ''
            return $str; 
        }
    }

Usage:

<?php
    //returns Apples
    $clean_string= strip_after_string ("Apples, Oranges, Banannas",",");
?>