how to check presence of certain character in a variable using php

Question

Am using code below to check presence of certain character via php and it works fine.

with code below, I can check if character a is presence in the variable and is working.

$mystring = 'my food is okay. its delicious';
$findme   = 'a';
$pos = strpos($mystring, $findme);
if ($pos !== false) {
echo 'data found';
}

Here is my issue: I need to check the also presence of multiple characters like m,e,s etc. any idea on how to achieve that.

Are all characters required or do you you just need to make sure at least one exists? Does it matter which order they are in? — MonkeyZeus, Jun 04 '19 at 17:47
Thanks alot .it works like charm. could you update so that i can select it as answer — jmarkatti, Jun 04 '19 at 17:48

AbraCadaver · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-04T20:13:40.273

There are many ways to do this, from using multiple strpos to comparisons after a str_replace. Here we can split the string into an array and calculate the intersection with another array:

$mystring = 'my food is okay. its delicious';
$findme   = ['m', 'e', 's'];

Check for ANY of the characters in the array:

if(array_intersect($findme, str_split($mystring))) {
    echo "1 or more found";
}

Check for ALL of the characters in the array:

if(array_intersect($findme, str_split($mystring)) == $findme) {
    echo "all found";
}

And for fun, run the array through a callback and filter it based upon whether it is in the string. This will check for ANY:

if(array_filter($findme, function($v) use($mystring) {
                             return strpos($mystring, $v) !== false;
                         }))
{
    echo "1 or more found";
}

This will check for ALL:

if(array_filter($findme, function($v) use($mystring) {
                             return strpos($mystring, $v) !== false;
                         }) == $findme)
{
    echo "all found";
}

`!array_diff($findme, str_split($mystring))` will also work for ALL. — Don't Panic, Jun 04 '19 at 18:01

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 04 '19 at 18:18

2

Another way to do this is with trim.

$mystring = 'my food is okay. its delicious';
$findme = 'ames';

$any = trim($findme, $mystring) != $findme;
$all = !trim($findme, $mystring);

answered Jun 04 '19 at 18:18

Don't Panic

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 04 '19 at 17:50

This function will do the trick for you:

/**
 * Takes an array of needles and searches a given string to return all
 * needles found in the string. The needles can be words, characters,
 * numbers etc.
 * 
 * @param array $needles
 * @param string $haystack
 * @return array|null
 */
function searchString(array $needles, string $haystack): ?array
{
    $itemsFound = [];
    foreach($needles as $needle) {
        if (strpos($haystack, $needle) !== false) {
            $itemsFound[] = $needle;   
        }
    }

    return $itemsFound;
}

https://3v4l.org/5oXGp

how to check presence of certain character in a variable using php

3 Answers3