PHP Manual: Return part of a string

Description

string substr ( string $string , int $start [, int $length ] )

Returns the portion of string specified by the start and length parameters.

Parameters

string

The input string. Must be one character or longer.

start

If start is non-negative, the returned string will start at the start'th position in string, counting from zero. For instance, in the string 'abcdef', the character at position 0 is 'a', the character at position 2 is 'c', and so forth.

If start is negative, the returned string will start at the start'th character from the end of string.

If string is less than start characters long, FALSE will be returned.

Example #1 Using a negative start


<?php
$rest = substr("abcdef", -1);    // returns "f"
$rest = substr("abcdef", -2);    // returns "ef"
$rest = substr("abcdef", -3, 1); // returns "d"
?>

length

If length is given and is positive, the string returned will contain at most length characters beginning from start (depending on the length of string).

If length is given and is negative, then that many characters will be omitted from the end of string (after the start position has been calculated when a start is negative). If start denotes the position of this truncation or beyond, FALSE will be returned.

If length is given and is 0, FALSE or NULL, an empty string will be returned.

If length is omitted, the substring starting from start until the end of the string will be returned.

Example #2 Using a negative length


<?php
$rest = substr("abcdef", 0, -1);  // returns "abcde"
$rest = substr("abcdef", 2, -1);  // returns "cde"
$rest = substr("abcdef", 4, -4);  // returns false
$rest = substr("abcdef", -3, -1); // returns "de"
?>

Return Values

Returns the extracted part of string; or FALSE on failure, or an empty string.

Changelog

Version	Description
7.0.0	If `string` is equal to `start` characters long, an empty string will be returned. Prior to this version, `FALSE` was returned in this case.
5.2.2 - 5.2.6	If the `start` parameter indicates the position of a negative truncation or beyond, false is returned. Other versions get the string from start.

Examples

Example #3 Basic substr usage


<?php
echo substr('abcdef', 1);     // bcdef
echo substr('abcdef', 1, 3);  // bcd
echo substr('abcdef', 0, 4);  // abcd
echo substr('abcdef', 0, 8);  // abcdef
echo substr('abcdef', -1, 1); // f

// Accessing single characters in a string
// can also be achieved using "square brackets"
$string = 'abcdef';
echo $string[0];                 // a
echo $string[3];                 // d
echo $string[strlen($string)-1]; // f

?>

Example #4 substr casting behaviour


<?php
class apple {
    public function __toString() {
        return "green";
    }
}

echo "1) ".var_export(substr("pear", 0, 2), true).PHP_EOL;
echo "2) ".var_export(substr(54321, 0, 2), true).PHP_EOL;
echo "3) ".var_export(substr(new apple(), 0, 2), true).PHP_EOL;
echo "4) ".var_export(substr(true, 0, 1), true).PHP_EOL;
echo "5) ".var_export(substr(false, 0, 1), true).PHP_EOL;
echo "6) ".var_export(substr("", 0, 1), true).PHP_EOL;
echo "7) ".var_export(substr(1.2e3, 0, 4), true).PHP_EOL;
?>

Output of the above example in PHP 7:

1) 'pe'
2) '54'
3) 'gr'
4) '1'
5) ''
6) ''
7) '1200'

Output of the above example in PHP 5:

1) 'pe'
2) '54'
3) 'gr'
4) '1'
5) false
6) false
7) '1200'

Errors/Exceptions

Returns FALSE on error.


<?php
var_dump(substr('a', 2)); // bool(false)
?>

substr