How to remove everything before the first specific character in a string?

Question

My variables look like this:

AAAAAAA, BB CCCCCCCC

AAAA,BBBBBB CCCCCC

I would like to remove everything before the ",",

so the results should look like:

BB CCCCCCCC

BBBBBB CCCCCC

I have worked out this to remove everything AFTER the ",":

list($xxx) = explode(',', $yyyyy);

unfortunately I dont know how to get it to work to remove everything BEFORE the ",".

You might find [`s($str)->afterFirst(',')`](https://github.com/delight-im/PHP-Str/blob/8fd0c608d5496d43adaa899642c1cce047e076dc/src/Str.php#L435) helpful, as found in [this standalone library](https://github.com/delight-im/PHP-Str). — caw, Jul 27 '16 at 03:55

Andrew Moore · Answer 1 · 2011-03-16T18:30:33.777

27

Since this is a simple string manipulation, you can use the following to remove all characters before the first comma:

$string = preg_replace('/^[^,]*,\s*/', '', $input);

preg_replace() allows you to replace parts of a string based on a regular expression. Let's take a look at the regular expression.

/ is the start delimiter

^ is the "start of string" anchor

[^,] every character that isn't a comma (^ negates the class here)

* repeated zero or more times

, regular comma

\s any whitespace character

* repeated zero or more times

/ end delimiter

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:30

answered Mar 16 '11 at 18:21

Andrew Moore

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2

Regular expressions are your friend. – Canuteson Mar 16 '11 at 18:27
What if I want to remove every char before **and including** comma? – mim Feb 16 '16 at 16:07
I've been looking for the same. End up by replacing the `''` with `','` so the complete code will become: `$string = preg_replace('/^[^,]*,\s*/', ',', $input);` – eQ19 Mar 10 '16 at 14:52

Tim Cooper · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-16T18:44:46.047

20

I wouldn't recommend using explode, as it causes more issues if there is more than one comma.

// removes everything before the first ,
$new_str = substr($str, ($pos = strpos($str, ',')) !== false ? $pos + 1 : 0);

Edit:

if(($pos = strpos($str, ',')) !== false)
{
   $new_str = substr($str, $pos + 1);
}
else
{
   $new_str = get_last_word($str);
}

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:44

answered Mar 16 '11 at 18:20

Tim Cooper

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this is the one you should use, IMHO – Pedro Mar 16 '11 at 18:22
+1 -- It's faster and more readable (IMHO) than the regexp. Go with this. – Martin Tournoij Mar 16 '11 at 18:24
@Carpetsmoker: This fails however when there isn't any comma. `strpos()` returns false when there isn't a comma, `false + 1` = 1 which means you'll end up stripping your first character. – Andrew Moore Mar 16 '11 at 18:25
@Andrew: Fixed so it doesn't fail if there is no comma present. I do prefer your regex solution over this. – Tim Cooper Mar 16 '11 at 18:27
Yes, this worked great! One last thing: is it possible to include a "if" statement that, in case there is no ",", will use another function to use the last word of the string? – Andrej Mar 16 '11 at 18:28
1

use trim() like my example below – Lawrence Cherone Mar 16 '11 at 18:28
@Andrej: Do you need assistance with getting the last word in the string? – Tim Cooper Mar 16 '11 at 18:36
@Tim: I have a function already that outputs the last word of a given string. I have problems to tell the script to use that function in case there is NO ",". If thats even possible. – Andrej Mar 16 '11 at 18:38
p.s. i think you forgot a ")" after "if(($pos = strpos($str, ',')" it works great with "if(($pos = strpos($str, ','))" – Andrej Mar 16 '11 at 18:43
check mine below for better-ness ;P what is "get_last_word" – Lawrence Cherone Mar 16 '11 at 19:02

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 16 '11 at 18:21

2

list(,$xxx) = explode(',', $yyyyy, 2);

answered Mar 16 '11 at 18:21

nickf

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Also: `$xxx = explode(',', $yyyyy, 2)[1];`. – kenorb Nov 21 '18 at 13:29

Lawrence Cherone · Answer 4 · 2011-03-16T19:07:00.980

2

try this it gets the last stuff after the , if no , is present it will check from the last space, i wrapped it in a function to make it easy:

<?php 
$value='AAAA BBBBBB CCCCCC';
function checkstr($value){
    if(strpos($value,',')==FALSE){
        return trim(substr(strrchr($value, ' '), 1 ));  
    }else{
        return trim(substr($value, strpos($value,',')),',');
    }
}

echo checkstr($value);
?>

edited Mar 16 '11 at 19:07

answered Mar 16 '11 at 18:26

Lawrence Cherone

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this works good too! but how can i tell the script to use the last word of the string in case there is no "," ? – Andrej Mar 16 '11 at 18:35

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 16 '11 at 18:20

1

you can do:

$arr = explode(',', $yyyyy);
unset($arr[0]);
echo implode($arr);

answered Mar 16 '11 at 18:20

Naftali

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I think this is nice. Though you need to echo implode(',',$arr); to not lose the other commas. – embe Dec 11 '14 at 10:37
@embe there are no other commas in the question's example – Naftali Dec 11 '14 at 10:56
True. It was in my case, and to answer "Remove Everything Before the first “,” in a string" I think it's good to add. Thank you for a good solution. – embe Dec 11 '14 at 11:11

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered May 27 '15 at 12:39

Regex is generally expensive and i wouldn't recommend it for something as simple as this. Using explode and limiting it to 2 will probably result in the same execution time as using str_pos but you wouldn't have to do anything else to generate the required string as its stored in the second index.

 //simple answer 
 $str = explode(',', $yyyyy,2)[1];

OR

//better 

$arr = explode(',', $yyyyy,2);
$str = isset($arr[1]) ? $arr[1] : '';

How to remove everything before the first specific character in a string?

6 Answers6

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