PHP String present in any position

Question

In PHP, Suppose in a string $str = "How are you";

"are" can be detected by strpos("are",$str);

How to retrieve that "w r y" is present in $str? ("WheRe are You")

I have tried the above. Using wildcard characters like * did not give me desired results..

Do you just want to know whether the characters are present or not or whether they are present in the given sequence? — RST, Apr 09 '15 at 07:03
`if ((strpos('w', $string) !== false) && (strpos('r', $string) !== false) && (strpos('y', $string) !== false)) {....}` `strpos()` doesn't allow wildcard characters — Mark Baker, Apr 09 '15 at 07:04
However, [fnmatch()](http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.fnmatch.php) does accept wildcard characters: `if (fnmatch('*w*r*y*', $string)) {....}` It is case-sensitive, but `if (fnmatch('*[Ww]*[Rr]*[Yy]*', $string)) {....}` will work case-insensitive, as would `if (fnmatch('*w*r*y*', strtolower($string))) {....}` — Mark Baker, Apr 09 '15 at 07:06

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

2

Use a regular expression:

if (preg_match('/w.*r.*y/i', $str)) {
    ...
}

This requires them to be in this specific order. If you want to match them in any order, it should be:

if (preg_match('/(?=.*w)(?=.*r)(?=.*y)/', $str)) {

edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

Community

answered Apr 09 '15 at 07:08

Barmar

1 Answers1