strcspn

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

strcspn — Find length of initial segment not matching mask

Description

int strcspn ( string $str1 , string $str2 [, int $start [, int $length ]] )

Returns the length of the initial segment of str1 which does not contain any of the characters in str2 .

Parameters

str1: The first string.
str2: The second string.
start: The start position of the string to examine.
length: The length of the string to examine.

Return Values

Returns the length of the segment as an integer.

Changelog

Version	Description
4.3.0	The `start` and `length` were added

Notes

Note: This function is binary-safe.


strcspn() can also be thought of as analogous to the following regular expression:

<?php

// where ... represents the mask of characters

preg_match('/[^ ...]/', substr($subject, $start, $length) );

?>

By this analogy, strcspn() can be used in place of some regular expressions to match a pattern without the overhead of a regex engine -- for example, ways to verify if an input string represents a binary value:

<?php

preg_match('/^[01]+$/i', $subject);

// or...

!preg_match('/[^01]/i', $subject);



// ...or using strcspn()

!strcspn($subject, '01');

?>

Dmitry Mazur
04-Mar-2009 03:17


The second parameter simply is the set of the "stop"-characters.

In other words, this function will return the index (starting from 0) of a first occurence of the stop-character.

PHP at NospamImmortalSoFar dot com
07-Oct-2006 10:31


Also useful for breaking down expressions - for example parsing SQL: values ('this', fn("that,)()", 4))



$sep = strcspn ($list, "'\"`");     //    Start of quoted string

$list = substr ($list, $sep);

$find = substr ($list, 0, 1);

while (($sep = strpos ($list, $find, $sep+1)) > 0 && substr ($list, $sep-1, 1) == '\\')

    {}

//  $sep now spans the entire string, regardless of embedded quotes



Once the strings have been removed, an expression can then be parsed for commas and brackets without worrying about them:



while ($out != '')

{

    $sep = strcspn ($list, "(),");      //  Next seperator

...

}

AT-HE (at_he AT hotmai1 DOT com)
27-Dec-2005 07:07


this function can be used like strspn(), except while that can be used to compare a string with an allowed pattern, this one can be use to compare a string with a FORBIDDEN pattern



so, to know if any forbidden character has a position inside our string, we can use (not tested with backslashes)...



<?php

// LARGE VERSION

$forbidden="\"\\?*:/@|<>";

if (strlen($filename) != strcspn($filename,$forbidden)) {

    echo "you cant create a file with that name!";

}



// SHORT VERSION

if (strlen($filename) - strcspn($filename,"\"\\?*:/@|<>")) {

    echo "i told you, you cant create that file";

}

?>

maskedcoder at hotmail dot com
10-Oct-2005 08:13


useful for finding beginning of quotes and/or tags in a variable containing html.  

    $pos = strcspn($data, '<"\''); 

will find the first occurance of either the beginning of a tag, or a double- or single-quoted string.

add a note

strip_tags

strcoll

Last updated: Fri, 06 Nov 2009