Question

I’m pretty capable when coding PHP though I just came across a situation where I wondered if it would be possible to use stristr to match any value in an array inside a SINGLE if condition. I don’t need/want a class, a dedicated function or anything super-complex nor am I doing anything complex such as trying to match special characters, I just think I may have missed something useful over at php.net.

The general notion…

if (stristr($search_this,$array_with_values)) {echo 'a match was found';}

…or what would amount to (even though this does not work)…

if (stristr($search_this,array('string1','string2'))) {echo 'a match was found';}

…I might try to find the strings ‘apple’,’orange’,’banana’ in a regular sentence/string.

I can define the array outside of the if condition.

My main goal is to simply not have numerous if conditions or use multiple operators such as && or ||.

So I do not want to have multiple || operators like this if possible…

if (
stristr($search_this_string,'string1') || 
stristr($search_this_string,'string2') || 
stristr($search_this_string,'string3')
) {echo 'a match was found';}

I don’t mind having the array before/outside of the if condition though I want to be able to fit everything else inside of a single if condition.

Answer 1

I doubt this is performant, but if you are looking for a reasonably simple-looking one-liner:

if( str_ireplace(array('string1', 'string2'), '', $str) != $str )
{
  echo 'a match was found';
}