indexOf and lastIndexOf in PHP?

Question

In Java, we can use indexOf and lastIndexOf. Since those functions don't exist in PHP, what would be the PHP equivalent of this Java code?

if(req_type.equals("RMT"))
    pt_password = message.substring(message.indexOf("-")+1);
else 
    pt_password = message.substring(message.indexOf("-")+1,message.lastIndexOf("-"));

Answer 1

You need the following functions to do this in PHP:

strpos Find the position of the first occurrence of a substring in a string

strrpos Find the position of the last occurrence of a substring in a string

substr Return part of a string

Here's the signature of the substr function:

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

The signature of the substring function (Java) looks a bit different:

string substring( int beginIndex, int endIndex )

substring (Java) expects the end-index as the last parameter, but substr (PHP) expects a length.

It's not hard, to get the desired length by the end-index in PHP:

$sub = substr($str, $start, $end - $start);

Here is the working code

$start = strpos($message, '-') + 1;
if ($req_type === 'RMT') {
    $pt_password = substr($message, $start);
}
else {
    $end = strrpos($message, '-');
    $pt_password = substr($message, $start, $end - $start);
}