Question

How can I get the longest word in a string?

Eg.

$string = "Where did the big Elephant go?";

To return "Elephant"

Answer 1

Loop through the words of the string, keeping track of the longest word so far:

<?php
$string = "Where did the big Elephant go?";
$words  = explode(' ', $string);

$longestWordLength = 0;
$longestWord = '';

foreach ($words as $word) {
   if (strlen($word) > $longestWordLength) {
      $longestWordLength = strlen($word);
      $longestWord = $word;
   }
}

echo $longestWord;
// Outputs: "Elephant"
?>

Can be made a little more efficient, but you get the idea.