Cutting out a word with substr

Question

In PHP i'm trying to cut out a specific word with the substr function.

The way I am doin this is:

Check if the word actually exists in the string:

$haystack = "/home/{i:id}/{s:aString}";
$needle = "{i:id}";

if ($position = strpos($haystack, $needle)) {...}

Calculate the last character in the word by using substr

$haystack = "/home/{i:id}/{s:aString}";
$needle = "{i:id}";

if ($position = strpos($haystack, $needle)) {
   $rpos = strpos($haystack, substr($needle, -1), $position);
   ...
}

Print out the word by using substr again

$haystack = "/home/{i:id}/{s:aString}";
$needle = "{i:id}";

if ($position = strpos($haystack, $needle)) {
   $rpos = strpos($haystack, substr($needle, -1), $position);

   echo substr($haystack, $position, $rpos);
}

When running this piece of code, it strips the whole word, but stops way to late, it also takes 5 characters of the remainder of the string.

How do I fix this substr so it will only take the word i'm looking for?

Do you want to remove the word? If so, you should use `str_replace()`? — Brett Gregson, Jul 20 '16 at 10:23
Possible duplicate of [Replacing Placeholder Variables in a String](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15773349/replacing-placeholder-variables-in-a-string) — wazelin, Jul 20 '16 at 10:24
@eskimo Get the characters between the 2 length positions i specify — Bas, Jul 20 '16 at 10:27
By the way, your condition `if ($position = strpos($haystack, $needle))` won't work for the cases when the placeholder is at the beginning of the string. You should use `if (($position = strpos($haystack, $needle)) !== false)`. Anyway you should use `str_replace` as it was suggested before. — wazelin, Jul 20 '16 at 10:28
Depending on what you're using this for you could use `explode("/",$string)` to break the string into an array by the "/" character — Brett Gregson, Jul 20 '16 at 10:29

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 20 '16 at 10:32

0

I'm not having enough reputation so posting answer. Try this,

<?php
$sentence  = "I want to remove all the common words from this sentence because they are irrelevant";
$common_words = array("to ", "this ", "all ", "the ", "from ");

$newphrase = str_replace($common_words, "", $sentence);
echo "Actual Word : ".$sentence."\n\nNew Word : ".$newphrase;
?>

Let me know if it helps.

answered Jul 20 '16 at 10:32

Mano Hari

1

please have a look at http://php.net/manual/en/function.str-replace.php it might help to improve your answer. – Evhz Jul 20 '16 at 10:37

Cutting out a word with substr

1 Answers1