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There is this post:

PHP Subtract First Character of String

It advices me to use substr(...);

I want to keep a rolling text to log if an error occurs, (The 1000 latest characters from a stream) but it seems like there would be a better way than to create a 1000 character string from a 1001 character string, then assigning that string to the latter.

I will be doing this in a very tight loop, so performance should not be negligible (even though I haven't measure this yet).

Is there any way to delete first character of a string in-place?

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2 Answers 2

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1

This should work properly but not a good choice

<?php
    $str = '12345678';
    $str[0] = null;
    echo $str; // output: 2345678
?>

Since

echo strlen($str); // output: 8 because first character is not deleted, it is "hidden"

Take me over 500 points if this is helpful (:

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2 Comments

Hrumf, I might do something similar in the end (iterate over string, setting [n] = [n + 1]). Should be better than copying the string for every single character...
What do you mean by "copying the string for every single character"? Anyway, I think the use of substr() is not that bad :) No need to use a loop this problem.
0

The obvious question would be why you would want to do this in PHP? You probably have operating system support for rolling logs.

However, if you wish to have a robust solution you are most likely best off using substr.

Another option could be to use the array access for a string:

unset(your_string[0]);
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1 Comment

How can you unset a string offset?

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