Remove a String after a Space in PHP

This article, will discuss multiple ways to remove a string after a space in PHP.

Table Of Contents

Background

There are scenarios in PHP programming where you need to manipulate a string by removing everything after a specific character, such as a space. This could be for formatting, data processing, or string manipulations.

For example, consider the following string:

$originalString = "Sample String!";

If you want to remove everything after the first space, the desired output would be:

"Sample"

Let’s look at some methods to achieve this.

Solution 1: Using strstr()

The strstr() function is useful for finding the first occurrence of a substring in a string and returning all the text before it.

Let’s see the complete example,

<?php
$originalString = "Sample String!";

// Get the part of the string before the first space
$modifiedString = strstr($originalString, ' ', true);

echo $modifiedString;
?>

Output

Sample

In this code:
– strstr($originalString, ‘ ‘, true) searches for the first space in $originalString.
– The third parameter true tells strstr() to return the part of the string before the first occurrence of the space.
– This function is particularly useful when you need to handle the possibility of a space not being present in the string.

Solution 2: Using explode()

Another method is to use explode() which splits a string by a specified delimiter and returns an array of strings. You can then use the first element of this array.

Let’s see the complete example,

<?php
$originalString = "Sample String!";

// Split the string into parts
$parts = explode(' ', $originalString);

// Get the first part of the string
$modifiedString = $parts[0];

echo $modifiedString;
?>

Output

Sample

In this code:
– We split $originalString at spaces using explode().
– $parts[0] contains the string segment before the first space.
– This method works well when you are sure the space exists in the string and you want to capture the string up to that space.

Summary

To remove a substring after a space in a PHP string, both strstr() and explode() functions are effective. strstr() is a good choice when the space might not be present, or you want a more straightforward approach, while explode() offers a simple solution when you are certain about the space’s existence and its position in the string.