Question

$str1 = "HEADINGLEY";
$str2 = "HDNGLY";

how can i seach string 1 to see if it contains all the characters from string 2 in the order they exist in string 2 and return a true or false value ?

Any help appreciated 😀

if this helps, this is the code i have todate..

echo preg_match('/.*H.*D.*N.*G.*L.*Y.*/', $str1, $matches);

returns 0

Answer 1

I guess I’d use preg_match

http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.preg-match.php

…and turning $str2 into a regular expression using str_split to get an array and implode to turn it back into a string with ".*" as glue between characters.

http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.str-split.php
http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.implode.php

Upate — I should have suggested str_split instead of explode, and here is the code that will get you a regular expression from $str2

$str2pat = "/.*" . implode(".*", str_split($str2)) . ".*/";