[RESOLVED] Help parse string

$description = ' "klsfdsfasdfasdf" slsjfklasdf "kjsfklasdjflaksfja" ';

What I would like to do is to finish off with a string of only the first group of brackets. So everything after that is to be discarded.

I can use 'substr' to begin from the 1st letter (not the 0th as that is the first ") but how can I make it continue on until the NEXT "?

eg.

$d = substr($description,1,?);

Actually, because you have whitespace at the start of the string, the character at position 1 is ", because position 0 is the whitespace. So the first thing you'd want to do is trim(), and then you could use substr() with the help of strpos(), like so:

Code:

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$description = trim($description);
$d = substr($description,1,strpos($description,'"',1)-1);

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strpos($description,'"',1)-1 will return the position of the second ", minus one, which is the length of the sub string you want.

I tend to prefer regex for string parsing though - it's usually simpler and more powerful. Using preg_match(), you'd do this:

Code:

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preg_match('/"([^"]*)"/',$description,$matches);

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Your matched string is now is $matches[1] ($matches[0] contains the string too, but with " on either side). I can explain this example in more detail if you'd like.

Excellent, thank you! I used the preg_match method and it worked great:)