On 28 October 2016 23:33:00 BST, German Geek <geek.de@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >regex is nicer, because it is less code and you can detect any white >space >etc. > >However! > >substring etc will be faster and more understandable to others who do >not >know much about regexes. > >On Sat, 29 Oct 2016 at 02:21 Christoph M. Becker <cmbecker69@xxxxxx> >wrote: > >> On 28.10.2016 at 14:51, Richard wrote: >> >> >> Date: Friday, October 28, 2016 12:09:31 +0100 >> >> From: Ashley Sheridan <ash@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> >> >> >> >> On 28 October 2016 12:01:16 BST, Narcis Garcia >> >> <informatica@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> >> >>> Hello, I have a string (I quote here only) as: >> >>> >> >>> ' <table>...</table>' >> >>> >> >>> As you can see there are 3 spaces at the beginning, but it could >> >>> be 0 or >> >>> 4 or any number of spaces. >> >>> How can I get a string with only the initial spaces part? >> >>> >> >>> ' <table>...</table>' -> ' ' >> >>> 'hello' -> '' >> >>> ' hello' -> ' ' >> >>> >> >>> Thanks. >> >> >> >> Have you tried regular expressions? Something like: >> >> >> >> ^( )*[^ ] >> >> >> >> The first captured match is the number of spaces, from 0 to any >> >> amount. Not the space between the brackets and before the closing >> >> square bracket >> > >> > You need to take into consideration that "whitespace" can be >created >> > by more than the simple "space" (ascii 32) character. A >"[horizontal] >> > tab" (ascii 9) is common, but also look at the top of php trim >> > function documentation: >> > >> > <http://php.net/manual/en/function.trim.php> >> > >> > to see the characters that it handles as "whitespace". >> >> If general whitespace should be detected with a regexp, \s could be >used. >> >> > While "trim" >> > does the opposite of what you're after, […] >> >> Indeed, so one could do something like >> >> substr($string, 0, strlen($string) - strlen(ltrim($string))) >> >> I'd prefer a regexp solution, though. >> >> -- >> Christoph M. Becker >> >> >> -- >> PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) >> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php >> >> I really don't think performing two strlen() calls, a substr(), & an ltrim() is going to be faster than a regular expression. I don't think you should avoid regex's because some people don't understand them. It's a very simple regular expression. You wouldn't tell someone to avoid PDO and use mysql_* functions because PDO is too complicated for some people would you? -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
