CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpsubstring
user982124
user982124

Reputation: 4622

PHP - Parse out characters from string

I'm working with some strings that appear in the following formats:

 $string = 'Acme Building Company - BZ-INTERNAL 1';
 $string = 'Acme Building Company - TRP-SHOP-1';
 $string = 'Acme Building Company - ZJG-INTERNAL 2';

I now need to get to the characters in the middle of these strings and parse them out, so in the above examples I would end up with the following:

  BZ
  TRP
  ZJG

I'm looking for the most dynamic approach so I don't have to hardcode any substitution strings but haven't been able to come up with anything so far.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 754

Answers (6)

mickmackusa
mickmackusa

Reputation: 48041

The second call to strtok() can isolate the desired substring.

Notice that the character mask on the second call includes a space so that the following value is effectively left trimmed.

Code: (Demo)

$string = 'Acme Building Company - BZ-INTERNAL 1';

strtok($string, '-');
var_export(strtok('- '));
// 'BZ'

Upvotes: 0

Navneet Singh Chouhan
Navneet Singh Chouhan

Reputation: 42

<?php preg_match("/(.*)-(.*)-(.*)/", $input_line, $output_array); echo trim($output_array[2]);?>

or 

<?php preg_match("/(.*) - (.*)-(.*)/", $input_line, $output_array); echo $output_array[2];?>

Upvotes: 0

Jonathan
Jonathan

Reputation: 2877

Using a regular expression will do this quite nicely.

$match = null;
if (preg_match('/- (.*?)-/', $string, $matches)) {
    $match = $matches[1];
}

Upvotes: 0

lazyCoder
lazyCoder

Reputation: 2561

@user982124 if your string format will be the same so yes you can explode() it and at the 1th index you will get your characters like:

<?php
 $string1 = 'Acme Building Company - BZ-INTERNAL 1';
 $string2 = 'Acme Building Company - TRP-SHOP-1';
 $string3 = 'Acme Building Company - ZJG-INTERNAL 2';

 $strArr1 = explode("-", $string1);
 echo trim($strArr1[1])."<br>";

 $strArr2 = explode("-", $string2);
 echo trim($strArr2[1])."<br>";

 $strArr3 = explode("-", $string3);
 echo trim($strArr3[1])."<br>";

Upvotes: -1

Jason Joslin
Jason Joslin

Reputation: 1144

Im keen to wait and see how other people would approach this question. But if you can guarantee the string will always be formatted the way you have shown I would personally try:

$exploded = explode('-', $string);
$intials = trim($exploded[1]);

Upvotes: 0

Shakti Phartiyal
Shakti Phartiyal

Reputation: 6254

Use explode(); PHP function like so:

<?php
$string = 'Acme Building Company - BZ-INTERNAL 1';
$tmp = explode('-', $string);
$middle = trim($tmp[1]);
echo $middle;

The output of the above code segment will be: BZ

The syntax goes explode(DELIMITER, THE_STRING); Which returns an array.

So when we explode the given string BZ cones in the array index 1. You can use the same approach for all your strings, maybe in a loop.

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions