Changing the Case of a PHP String

PHP provides a number of functions that enable changes to be made to the case of text
contained in a string. These functions all take the string to be modified as an argument
and return the modifed string. It is important to note that these functions are
nondestructive, that is to say they do not make any change to the original string, they
simply return a completely new string containing the modification leaving the original
string unaltered. The returned string can be assigned to a new variable or used directly in
another function (such as a print or echo):

<?php
$myString = "This is a test string.";

$newString = strtoupper($myString); // Assign converted string to a

new variable

echo strtolower($myString); // Use retruned string in a

eacho statement
?>

If a change to the original string is required (as opposed to assigning the modified version
to a new variable) the returned string can simply be assigned to the original variable:

<?php
$myString = "This is a test string.";

$myString = strtoupper($myString); // Assign converted string to the

orignal variable

?>

The PHP string functions designed to change the case of a string are listed below with
descriptions:

strtolower() - Converts entire string to lowercase

strtoupper() - Converts entire string to uppercase

ucfirst() - Converts the first letter of the sentence to uppercase

ucwords() - Converts the first letter of every word to uppercase

[edit] Converting to and from ASCII Values

PHP provides the ability to work with ASCII (American Standard Code for Infomration
Interchange) values. ASCII maps numerical character codes to standard, human readable
characters. There are 127 ASCII characters representing the letters of the alphabext
(including upper and lower case), numbers and various punctuation marks. There is also
an extended character set which contains 255 characters.

PHP provides two functions for the purpose of converting to and from ASCII codes:

ord() - Takes a character as an argument and returns the ASCII code

corresponding to that character.

chr() - Takes an ASCII code as an argument and retuns the character equivalent.

The following example converts a character to an ASCII code and then reverts it back to
the character:

<?php
$character = 'A';

$asciicode = ord($character);

echo "The ASCII code for $character is " . $asciicode . '<br>';

$char = chr($asciicode);

echo "The character for ASCII code for $asciicode is " . $char . '<br>';

?>

When executed the above code will produce the following output:

The ASCII code for A is 65

The character for ASCII code for is A

[edit] Printing Formatted Strings in PHP

Those familar with other programming languages such as C and C++ will probably be
familiar with the concept of formatting strings and the printf() function. The printf
function allows strings to constructed which contain variables and provides a number of
formatting options for those variables.

Essentially, printf allows you to specify a string and define how particular variables are to
be embedded in that string. fprintf() takes two or more arguments and takes the the
following form:

fprintf ( "String", variable1, variable2, ... );

The String represents the string that is to displayed and contains the formatting specifiers.
The variables specify the variables that are to be substituted in place of the respective
formatting rules.
[edit] PHP printf formatting specifiers

The formatting specifiers begin with a '%' character following by a letter to indicate the
type of variable to be displayed. For example, a string is represented by %s. Optional
rules can be placed between the '%' and the type letter to control formatting.

The following table lists the variable types and the corresponding letter to use when
constructing the formatting rule:

Specifier Description
%% Displays a percent sign
%b A integer represnted as a binary number
%c A character based on the ASCII value
%d A signed decimal number
%e Scientific notation (for example 1.2e+2)
%u An unsigned decimal number
%f A floating-point number
%F Floating-point number
%o An octal number
%s A String
%x Hexadecimal number in lowercase letters
%X Hexadecimal number in uppercase letters

Before we look at the formatting options we first need to see some of the above rules in
action. Let's begin by embedding a string variable into a PHP printf function call:

<?php
$myColor = "Green";

printf("My favorite color is %s.", $myColor);

?>

In the above example the %s will be replaced by the value of $myString to create a string
which reads:

My favorite color is Green.

We can now consider creating printf statements which combine a number of different
formatting rules:

<?php
$myColor = "Green";
$myNumber = 12;

printf("My favorite color is %s and my lucky number is %d.", $myColor,

$myNumber);

?>

In the above example the %s will be replaced by the value of $myString and the %d will
be replaced by the decimal value of $myNumber to create a string which reads:

My favorite color is Green and my lucky number is 12.

Suppose we wanted to express our lucky number as a hexadecimal value (as all good
software engineers do). All we would need to do is replace the %d with a %x:

$formatted = printf ("My favorite color is %s and my lucky number is

%x.", $myString);

thereby generating the following output:

My favorite color is Green and my lucky number is c.

Finally we need to look at the formatting options which may be specified after the '%'
character.

+ - Forces both + or - in front of numbers. By default, only negative numbers

display their polarity.

'n - Specifies what to use as padding (represented by n). Used in conjunction with
the width specifier and defaults to space. Eg: %'_20s specified that '_' should be
used as padding.

- Left-justifies the value

[0-9] Specifies the minimum width to be used by the variable - used in conjuction
with the padding character

.[0-9] Specifies the number of decimal digits or maximum string length

As always, some examples will hopefully help to clarify these options:

To limit a floating point number to 2 decimal places:

<?php

$myColor = "Green";
$myNumber = 12.2089987;
printf("My number is %.2f.", $myNumber);
?>

To pad the formatting with '_' characters to a width of 12 characters:

<?php

$myNumber = 12.2089987;
printf("My number is %'_12f.", $myNumber);

?>

resulting in the following output:

My number is ___12.208999.

[edit] Finding the Length of a PHP String

The length of a PHP string can be obtained using the strlen() function. The strlen()
function takes the string to be measured as an argument and returns the length value:

<?php

$myString = "This is a short string";

$strLength = strlen ($myString);

echo "The string length is $strLength.<br>";

?>

[edit] Converting a String into a PHP Array

Any string in PHP can be converted into a PHP array (see the PHP Arrays chapter for an
overview of arrays). This is achieved using the PHP explode() function. The explode()
function takes three arguments and returns an array:

delimiter - the character that is to be used as the break point between array
elements. For example a space character or a comma.

string - the string that is to be converted into an array.

divisions - (Optional). Sepcified the maximim number of array elements the

string should be broken up into. When the limit is reach the final array element
contains the remainder of the string.

The following example shows the explode() function in use:

<?php
$myString = "This is a short string";

$myArray = explode($myString);

print_r($myArray);
?>

The above example will result in the following output, which shows each word in the
sentance assigned to an array element:

Array ( [0] => This [1] => is [2] => a [3] => short [4] => string )

[edit] Removing Leading and Trailing Whitespace from

a PHP String
The leading and trailing whitespcae can be removed from a string using the PHP trim()
function. Whitespace characters are defined by PHP to be space, tab, newline, carriage
return, NULL and vertical tab characters.

The trim() command takes the string to be trimmed as an argument and returns a
modified version of the string. The function is non-destructive, in that it does not modify
the original string.

The following example trims the whitespace from the specified string:

<?php
$string = " This is a string with lots of whitespace
";

echo "Before trim [$string]";

$trimmedString = trim($string);

echo "After trim [$trimmedString]";

?>

[edit] Comparing Strings in PHP

In developing web applications it is extremely common to need to compare two strings.
PHP provides a number of functions that make it easy to perfrom a number of different
string comparison tasks:

strcmp() - Accepts two strings as arguments, performs a case-sensitive

comparison and returns a value depending on the match.
 strcasecmp - Accepts two strings as arguments, performs a case-insensitive
comparison and returns a value depending on the match.

strncmp() - Accepts three arguments - the two strings to be compared and the
number of characters to be included in the comparison. Performs a case-sensitive
comparison of specified number of characters from each string and returns a value
depending on the result of the match.

strncasecmp() - Accepts three arguments - the two strings to be compared and the
number of characters to be included in the comparison. Performs a case-
insensitive comparison of specified number of characters from each string and
returns a value depending on the result of the match.

[edit] String Comparison Functions Return Value

The string comparison function perform an ASCII based comparison of each character. If
the ASCII codes of the two strings match then the functions return 0. If the first string has
a ASCII value less than the second a negative number is returned. If it is greater a
positive number is returned.

[edit] Accessing and Modifiying Characters in String

The individual characters in a string can be accessed and modified by their position in a
string. To achieve this, simply place the position of the required character in braces {}
after the string variable name. Keep in mind that indexes are zero based, so the first
character in a string in index position 0, not position 1.

For example to access the 2nd character in a string:

<?php

$myString = "abcdefghijklmn";

$myChar = $myString{1};

echo "2nd Char = $myChar";

?>

The above example will result in the following output:

2nd Char = b

Similarly the character position can be assigned a new value using the assigment
operator:

<?php
$myString = "abcdefghijklmn";
echo "Before change = $myString";

$myString{1} = 'B';

echo "Before change = $myString";

?>

The result from the above output will read as follows:

Before change = abcdefghijklmn

Before change = aBcdefghijklmn

[edit] Searching for Characters and Substrings in a

PHP String
PHP provides the ability to find the position of a specified sequence of characters (better
known as a substring) within a string via the strpos() and strrpos() functions.

The strpos() function finds the first occurance a substring and takes two mandatory and
one optional argument. The first argument is the string in which the search should be
performed, and the second the substring for which to search. The optional third argument
tells PHP the point in the string to initiate the search. The function returns boolean false
(0) if no match is found, otherwise it returns the index into the string of the occurence.

Note that if a string begins with the substring there will be some confusion since the
function will return 0, which could equally be interpreted as a failure to find a match. The
key point to understand here is that a failure to find a match will return a boolean zero. A
match starting at position zero will return a numeric 0. To resolve this issue it is best to
ensure that you are comparing like variable types. You may recall from the PHP
Operators chapter about comparing variables to ensure they are of the same type and
value using the === and !== operators. We can use this technique to vefify we are getting
boolean false, and not an integer 0:

<?php
if (strpos("Hello World", "Hello") !== false)
echo 'Match found';
?>

Similarly, the strrpos() function returns the position of the last occurance of the substring.

[edit] Extracting and Replacing Substrings in PHP

A sub-section of any PHP string can be extracted and replaced using the substr() and
substr_replace() functions.
The substr() function takes two arguments which represent the source string and the start
index. An optional third argument specifies the length of the substring (if no length is
specified the end of the string is assumed). The function returns the requested substring:

<?php

$myString = "There is a cat in the tree.";

$subString = substr ($myString, 11, 3);

echo "subString = $subString <br>";

?>

The above example will extract the word cat from the string.

The substr_replace() function takes up to four arguments. The first is the source string on
which the replace is to be performed. The second argument is the replacement string. The
third specifies the index offset of the start of the replacement. The optional fourth
argument defines number of characters from the offset point to include in the replacement
(useful if your replacement text is shorter than the original text being replaced).

We can now extend our example to replace some text in our string:

<?php

$myString = "There is a cat in the tree.";

echo "Original String = $myString<br>";

$myString = substr_replace ($myString, "dog", 11, 3);

echo "New String = $myString<br>";

?>

The above example will result in the following output:

Original String = There is a cat in the tree.

New String = There is a dog in the tree.

It is perfectly valid to replace one substring with another of different length. It is also
possible to simply remove a substring by simply passing in an empty replacement string
to the substr_replace() fucntion.

[edit] Replacing All Instances of a Word in a PHP String

All the instances of a word in a string can be replaced using the PHP str_replace()
function. str_replace() takes 3 required and one optional argument. The first argument
represents the string to be replaced, the second the replacement value and the third the
target string. The optional fourth argument is a reference to a variable where the results of
the replacement will be stored for subsequent inspection.

A simple example is as follows:

<?php
$myString = "There is a cat in the tree, and I think it is my cat!";

echo "Original String = $myString<br>";

$myString = str_replace ("cat", "dog", $myString);

echo "New String = $myString<br>";

?>

Resulting in the following output:

Original String = There is a cat in the tree, and I think it is my cat!

New String = There is a dog in the tree, and I think it is my dog!

If the search and replacement values are arrays of words then each word in the search
array is replaced by the corresponding value in the replacement array. For example:

<?php
$myString = "There is a cat in the tree, and I think it is my cat!";

echo "Original String = $myString<br>";

$myString = str_replace (array("is", "cat", "tree"), array("was", "dog",

"car"), $myString);

echo "New String = $myString<br>";

?>

The above example results in the following output:

Original String = There is a cat in the tree, and I think it is my cat!

New String = There was a dog in the car, and I think it was my dog!

A case insensitive search and replace can similarly be performed using the
eregi_replace() function which takes the same arguments as str_replace()