Question

I’m trying to write a function in PHP that finds the first letter in a string and then returns the remainder of the string. So, for example, if you had a string:

“8932? Test 14 String”

The function would return

“Test 14 String”

I have written the following function that seems to do the job:

    function removenums($withnums) {

            $letters = str_split($withnums);
            $position = 0;
            foreach($letters as $letter) {
                    if(preg_match("/[a-zA-Z]/",$letter)) {
                            break;
                    }
                    $position++;
            }

            $withoutnums = substr($withnums,$position);
            return $withoutnums;
    }

However, I’m just learning PHP and for the sake of education and I was wondering if someone with more experience might have a better solution. All responses are appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

You can simply use strpos with substr

echo substr($string,strpos($string,'?')+1);

And you are ready to go

Please notice you should avoid whenever possibile preg_* functions because they are generally slower than the simpler str* functions

After reading your comment

echo preg_replace( '/^[^a-z]+/i','',$string );