Question

In PHP, I want to remove the pound sign (#) from a hex string if it exists.

I tried the following:

$str = "#F16AD3";

//Match the pound sign in the beginning
if (preg_match("/^\#/", $str)) {
  //If it's there, remove it
  preg_replace('/^\#/', '', $str);
};

print $str;

But it didn’t work. It prints out #F16AD3

How can I remove the pound only if it exists?

Answer 1

echo ltrim('#F16AD3', '#');

http://php.net/manual/en/function.ltrim.php

EDIT: If you are only testing for the pound sign at the beginning of the string you can can use strpos:

if(strpos('#F16AD3', '#') === 0) {
    // found it
}