Super Quick PHP Question - Quick Answer!

[Zxcs]

Ok, I have a string of words, $message.

Lets say $message = "hello I am good today"

I want to cut the first word off of the string, so I can make another string, $othermessage which will be "I am good today"

I've tried splitting $message into words ($word) and then done substr($message,$word[0]) but it doesn't seem to work.

Any ideas? Thanks!

 

[carl67lp]

My O'Reilly PHP Cookbook suggests using "explode" for this problem.

$words = explode(' ', 'A space-separated list of words');

$words would then contain {"A", "space-separated", "list", "of", "words"}. Since that's an array, you can do all sorts of fun things with it.

 

[lomn75]

even quicker:

list($junk, $substr) = explode(' ', 'A space-separated list of words', 2);

$junk == 'A'
$substr == 'space-separated list of words'

 

[tim_m]

to only chop off the first word and retain the rest (including if for some reason there are multiple spaces between words), i would use preg_split with the limit parameter. explode also has a limit paramater

$str = "hello I am good today";
$arr = preg_split('!\s+!', $str, 2);
--or--
$arr = explode(' ', $str, 2);
echo $arr[1]; // should print "I am good today"

i haven't tested this but i think it will work. the preg_split way accounts for the possibility of more than one space being present.

 

[Icheb]

PCREs have way too much overhead for this. Just use the aforementioned way of explode() and you're fine.

 

[tim_m]

i'll overhead you!!!

or not. this is simply a distinction that while in this case may be ok to ignore, should be mentioned

$str = "Hello  there.  How are you   today?";
$arr = explode(' ', $str);
print_r($arr);
/*
outputs
Array
(
    [0] => Hello
    [1] => 
    [2] => there.
    [3] => 
    [4] => How
    [5] => are
    [6] => you
    [7] => 
    [8] => 
    [9] => today?
)
*/

$arr = explode(' ', $str, 2);
print_r($arr);
/*
outputs
Array
(
    [0] => Hello
    [1] =>  there.  How are you   today?
)
*/

$arr = preg_split('!\s+!', $str);
print_r($arr);
/*
outputs
Array
(
    [0] => Hello
    [1] => there.
    [2] => How
    [3] => are
    [4] => you
    [5] => today?
)
*/

 

[lomn75]

i'll overhead you!!!

I thought about mentioning this, then realized the multi-space scenario would work as above.

However, you could always trim() the initial string and the result of explode(). Less overhead for the win!

 

[SoRnMaN]

Actually, prolly the best way to do this is by this method:

<?php
$message = "hello I am good today";
$message = substr($message, (strpos(trim($message), " ") + 1));
echo $message;
?>

strpos() and substr() are much faster than explode and other options.