Question

Is there a way that I can search a variable starting from a given position and find the start position of a string that is in the variable backwards from the given start position.

So for example if I initially do $getstart = strpos($contents, 'position', 0);

I then want to do $getprevpos = prevstrpos($contents, 'previous token', $getstart);

Obviously there is no such function as prevstrpos but I hope you get what I mean.

Example text area (terrible example I now):
Here is an example where I want to find the previous token once I have found the start position of a text string.

Answer 1

you can strrpos( substr($contents, 0, $getstart), 'previous token')