Extract a substring between two characters in a string PHP

Question

Is there a PHP function that can extract a phrase between 2 different characters in a string? Something like substr();

Example:

$String          


        

Answer 1

Use:

<?php

$str = "[modid=256]";
$from = "=";
$to = "]";

echo getStringBetween($str,$from,$to);

function getStringBetween($str,$from,$to)
{
    $sub = substr($str, strpos($str,$from)+strlen($from),strlen($str));
    return substr($sub,0,strpos($sub,$to));
}

?>

Answer 2

use this code

$input = "[modid=256]";
preg_match('~=(.*?)]~', $input, $output);
echo $output[1]; // 256

working example http://codepad.viper-7.com/0eD2ns

Answer 3

Regular Expression is your friend.

preg_match("/=(\d+)\]/", $String, $matches);
var_dump($matches);

This will match any number, for other values you will have to adapt it.

Answer 4

Try Regular Expression

$String =" [modid=256]";
$result=preg_match_all('/(?<=(=))(\d+)/',$String,$matches);
print_r($matches[0]);

Output

Array ( [0] => 256 )

DEMO

Explanation Here its used the Positive Look behind (?<=)in regular expression eg (?<=foo)bar matches bar when preceded by foo, here (?<=(=))(\d+) we match the (\d+) just after the '=' sign. \d Matches any digit character (0-9). + Matches 1 or more of the preceeding token

Answer 5

(moved from comment because formating is easier here)

might be a lazy approach, but in such cases i usually would first explode my string like this:

$string_array = explode("=",$String); 

and in a second step i would get rid of that "]" maybe through rtrim:

$id = rtrim($string_array[1], "]");

...but this will only work if the structure is always exactly the same...

-cheers-

ps: shouldn't it actually be $String = "[modid=256]"; ?

Answer 6

If you don't want to use reqular expresion, use strstr, trim and strrev functions:

// Require PHP 5.3 and higher
$id = trim(strstr(strstr($String, '='), ']', true), '=]');

// Any PHP version
$id = trim(strrev(strstr(strrev((strstr($String, '='))), ']')), '=]');