Question

So let’s say that I have the following code:

$var = '-77-randomtext-moretext.extension'

So that nothing in the variable is fixed, except for the hyphens ( – ), and the extension.

Then let’s say that I need to strore the ‘-77-‘ part as a string.
‘-77-‘ meaning anything in between the first two hyphens, including the hyphens themselves.

How could I do this?

Answer 1

The two primary ways to do that would be either explode or preg_filter.

Split:

$varArray = explode( '-', $var );
$string77 = '-' . $varArray[1] . '-'; // equals '-77-'

preg_filter;

$string77 = preg_filter( '/^(-.+-).*$/', '$1', $varArray ); // equals '-77-', or NULL if the string doesn't match

The split method is quicker, but less reliable. preg_filter will ensure you always get either the data you want, or a NULL if it doesn’t exist, but requires more processing.