Question

Im trying to find a way to unset an element if the first character is a certain letter, in this case the letter D… I’m not sure if there is an array function to do something of the sort or if a preg replace would do the trick?

[0] => Aaron [1] => Bob [2] => Carl [3] => Dale [4] => Devin [5] => Dylan

Unset all words that start with letter “D” Would result in:

[0] => Aaron [1] => Bob [2] => Carl

Answer 1

You could use the array_filter function:

function filter_firstchar($var){
    return $var[0] != 'D';
}

$result = array_filter($arr, 'filter_firstchar');

If the letter you are going to be filtering by is going to change, you can build a really basic filtering class:

class Filter_FirstChar {
    private $char;
    function __construct($char){
        $this->char = $char;
    }
    function filter($var){
        return $var[0] != $this->char;
    }
}

$result = array_filter($arr, array(new Filter_FirstChar('A'), 'filter'));