Remove characters from beginning of a String in PHP

This article, will discuss multiple ways to remove characters from beginning of a string in PHP.

Table Of Contents

Background

Sometimes in PHP programming, you may need to remove a specific portion from the start of a string. For instance, if you have a string like “Hello, this is a sample string”, and you want to remove the first 7 characters, the resulting string should be “this is a sample string”.

Solution 1: Using substr()

The substr() function in PHP is designed to return a portion of a string. By specifying the start position and the length, you can effectively remove the beginning part of the string.

Removing a Fixed Number of Characters

Let’s see the complete example,

<?php
$originalString = "Hello, this is a sample string";

// Remove the first 7 characters
$modifiedString = substr($originalString, 7);

// Display the result
echo $modifiedString;
?>

Output

this is a sample string

In this example, substr($originalString, 7) returns the substring of $originalString starting from the 7th character to the end of the string.

Removing up to a Specific Character

If you want to remove the string portion up to a specific character, you first need to find the position of that character using strpos(), and then use substr().

Let’s see the complete example,

<?php
$originalString = "Hello, this is a sample string";

// Find the position of the comma
$position = strpos($originalString, ",");

// Check if the comma was found
if ($position !== false) {
    // Remove everything up to and including the comma
    $modifiedString = substr($originalString, $position + 1);
} else {
    $modifiedString = $originalString; // Or handle the absence of the comma
}

// Display the result
echo $modifiedString;
?>

Output

this is a sample string

In this code, strpos($originalString, “,”) finds the position of the comma, and substr($originalString, $position + 1) is used to get the substring starting from the character after the comma.

Summary

To remove the beginning of a string in PHP, substr() is a straightforward and efficient method. It can be used to remove either a fixed number of characters or the portion of the string up to a specific character. This function is widely used in PHP for various string manipulation tasks, providing flexibility and simplicity in handling strings.