Combine strpos !== false and pos <

Question

Is there a way to combine

 if ((strpos($str,"abc") !== false) and (strpos($str,"abc") < 1000))

Or do I need two ifs for that? Because if abc isn't in the string the position is -1 so smaller than 1000.

I am only interested if php have some special for this problem ;)

Is this:

if (strpos(substr($str,0,1000),"abc") !== false)

a good way for it?

my example is working, but I want to have sth. shorter ;) I would like to delete the "and" — Wikunia, Oct 02 '13 at 08:56
Doc says `Returns FALSE if the needle was not found.`. So you won't get `-1`. — Jakub Matczak, Oct 02 '13 at 08:57
'and' is actually valid. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2803321/and-vs-as-operator — allen213, Oct 02 '13 at 08:57
@MackieeE `and` is valid operator. http://pl1.php.net/manual/en/language.operators.logical.php — Jakub Matczak, Oct 02 '13 at 08:57
@dragoste This didn't know and actually quite surprised.. :| (Still I'd *never* use it.) — MackieeE, Oct 02 '13 at 08:59
I think I will use this: if (strpos(substr($str,0,1000),"abc") !== false) — Wikunia, Oct 02 '13 at 08:59
@MarkBaker: assignation inside an if like that is really not good a good habit to take for clarity. "Did you mean to assign, or is it a typo while you meant a comparison ?". I understand you answered the question, but this should be avoided. — Lepidosteus, Oct 02 '13 at 09:08
@Lepidosteus - I agree with you about clarity, and won't generally use that type of syntax either; though I still don't really understand the OPs issue other than that he wants fewer characters in his line of code — Mark Baker, Oct 02 '13 at 09:16

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 02 '13 at 09:00

$pos_abc = strpos($str, 'abc');
if ($pos_abc !== false && $pos_abc < 1000)

You want to test two different things: 1- is abc in the string ? and 2- is abc in the first thousand characters of that string. While it is possible to rewrite it in a single test, it provides no benefit, and it would actually costs a lot of clarity in your code.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 02 '13 at 09:00

You could try this if you want:

if( in_array(strpos($str,"abc"),range(0,1000),true))

However it doesn't look any simpler and it comes at a quite severe performance cost.

Perhaps the best way would be to use a variable:

$pos = strpos($str,"abc");
if( $pos !== false && $pos < 1000) ...

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 02 '13 at 09:08

0

two issues:

your double strpos
the comparison (2. and operator) depends on the first, which may cause issues (eg. in later php versions)

UPDATE:

the nice and quick solution pattern:

if(($pos = strpos($str,"abc") !== false)?($pos < 1000):false)

the nice and clean solution pattern:

$pos = strpos($str,"abc");
if(($pos !== false)?($pos < 1000):false)

answered Oct 02 '13 at 09:08

Quicker

1,247
8
16

assignation inside an if like that is really not good a good habit to take for clarity. "Did you mean to assign, or is it a typo while you meant a comparison ?". I understand you answered the question, but this should be avoided. This solution is anything but "nice and clean" – Lepidosteus Oct 02 '13 at 09:08

Combine strpos !== false and pos <

3 Answers3