Question

I am currently making a website where I require a very advanced search engine. I want the users to be able to say Person @ company or Product @ Category. How would I detect the @ sign or any special characters, filter them out and make individual variables based on the returned string. So $a = Person and $b = company.

Answer 1

You can use explode() to split a string:

$items = explode('@', 'Person @ Company', 2);

if(count($items) === 2) {
    // Person @ Company
    $person = trim($items[0]);
    $company = trim($items[1]);
    // Do your searching here...
} else {
    // Search normally, not Person @ Company.
}