PHP : Extract part of a string starting from the middle




Extracting part of the string is a fairly common task in programming and sometimes it can be a bit challenging to extract string starting from a middle of a larger string.

To illustrate the problem here. Let say your :

Problem :

You have a string that looks like this :

 expires  Friday, December 23, 2014 @ 11:59pm 

and you want to final string result to be like :

 Friday, December 23, 2014

Solutions :

First solution :

Use substr(), strlen() and strpos() functions

 $string = "expires  Friday, December 23, 2014 @ 11:59pm";
 $final = substr($string, 14, strpos($string, '@') - strlen($string));

Second solution :

Which is more efficient, but less simpler to grasp for those not familiar with regular expression

 $string = "expires  Friday, December 23, 2014 @ 11:59pm";
 $final = preg_replace('/expires\s*(.*?)@/', '\1', $string);




By Adam Ng

IF you gain some knowledge or the information here solved your programming problem. Please consider donating to the less fortunate or some charities that you like. Apart from donation, planting trees, volunteering or reducing your carbon footprint will be great too.


Advertisement