Check if string contains specific words?

Consider:

$a = 'How are you?';

if ($a contains 'are')
    echo 'true';

Suppose I have the code above, what is the correct way to write the statement

if ($a contains 'are')

Answers

175

This answer is accepted

You can use the strpos function which is used to find the occurrence of one string inside other:

if (strpos($a, 'are') !== false) {
    echo 'true';
}

Note that the use of !== false is deliberate; strpos returns either the offset at which the needle string begins in the haystack string, or the boolean false if the needle isn't found. Since 0 is a valid offset and 0 is "falsey", we can't use simpler constructs like

!strpos($a, 'are').

Thijs Reeringh

11977 reputation

Posted on:25 Aug '16 - 05:37

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