Question

So currently I have a problem. I have this snippet of code to see if a phrase is present in another phrase:

if(strstr($matches[1], $query))

So for example if:

$matches[1] = "arctic white"
$query = "arctic"

In the case above, the code would detect that the phrase “arctic” is in the phrase “arctic white” although, what I want is for it to detect if it is inside words as well and not just phrases.

For example if:

$matches[1] = "antarctica"
$query = "arctic"

In that case the script would NOT detect the word “arctic” in “antarctica” although it is. So I was wondering, how can I edit if(strstr($matches[1], $query)) so it would detect ALL words that have the $query content in it? Please help!

Answer 1

You can use preg_match() for much better result. The preg_match doesn’t encompass regular expressions only. It can do exactly what you need. i.e.:

if (preg_match("/arctic/i", "antarctica")) {
    // it is there do something
} else {
    // it is not there do something else
}

btw, the small “i” means case sensitivity, check PHP manual for more examples: http://php.net/manual/en/function.preg-match.php