PHP partial string match

Question

I'm new to PHP.

I'm trying to search through an array of data, and match any item that contains a partial string

EX: if user inputs "oh" the search will find any item containing "oh", so the item could be John.

I have this so far, doesn't match anything

if(isset($_POST['firstName'])){
    for($i = 0 ; $i<count($studentInfo);$i++){
        if(strpos($firstName,$studentInfo[$i][2]))

of course there is other code to do something once the item is found. I've seen a lot of substr methods, and STRPOS functions, I just can't figure out how to make it work with my code.

Alec Sanger · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-24 03:17:08Z

2

Edit: Looking closer at your question, it seems as though you are searching for matches within the values of an array. There's something similar to preg_match() for this called preg_grep().

$arrMatchingValues = preg_grep("/^findme/", $array);

Take a look at preg_match(). Using some sample code from that page:

<?php
$subject = "abcdef";
$pattern = '/^def/';
preg_match($pattern, $subject, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE, 3);
print_r($matches);
?>

$subject is what you want to search. $pattern is the regex pattern that you'd like to match against.

edited Feb 24, 2013 at 3:17

answered Feb 24, 2013 at 3:11

Alec Sanger

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Christian Stewart · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-24 03:09:00Z

0

You will want to use a regular expression. In your specific case, you should loop through the array, and for each item, use preg_match (as detailed in the linked article). Any matched items should be added to another array, or you can do whatever you want with it.

answered Feb 24, 2013 at 3:09

Christian Stewart

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2 Comments

user1050632 Over a year ago

I'm trying to make this preg_match work with my code, would this go inside the second if loop?

Ares Over a year ago

As per PHP [php.net/manual/en/function.preg-match.php]: Tip Do not use preg_match() if you only want to check if one string is contained in another string. Use strpos() or strstr() instead as they will be faster.

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