how to remove first word from a php string

user_862445 0
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I'd like to remove the first word from a string using PHP. Tried searching but couldn't find an answer that I could make sense of.

eg: "White Tank Top" so it becomes "Tank Top"

Thanks

word php
6 Answers

If you are not guaranteed to have a space in your string, be careful to choose a technique that won't fail on such cases.

If using explode() be sure to limit the explosions for best efficiency.

Demonstration:

$strings = ["White", "White Tank", "White Tank Top"];
foreach ($strings as $string) {
    echo "\n{$string}:";
    echo "\n-\t" , substr($string, 1 + (strpos($string, ' ') ?: -1));

    $explodeOnce = explode(' ', $string, 2);
    echo "\n-\t" , end($explodeOnce);              

    echo "\n-\t" , substr(strstr($string, " "), 1);

    echo "\n-\t" , ltrim(strstr($string, " "));

    echo "\n-\t" , preg_replace('~^\S+\s~', '', $string);
}

Output:

White:
-   White
-   White
-                       // strstr() returned false
-                       // strstr() returned false  
-   White
White Tank:
-   Tank
-   Tank
-   Tank
-   Tank
-   Tank
White Tank Top:
-   Tank Top
-   Tank Top
-   Tank Top
-   Tank Top
-   Tank Top

My preference is the regex technique because it is stable in all cases above and is a single function call. Note that there is no need for a capture group because the fullstring match is being replaced. ^ matches the start of the string, \S+ matches one or more non-whitespace characters and \s matches one whitespace character.

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