Extracting a string starting with # or # php - php

Question

function extractConnect($str,$connect_type){
$connect_array = array();
$connect_counter = 0;
$str = trim($str).' ';
for($i =0; $i<strlen($str);$i++) {
$chr = $str[$i];
if($chr==$connect_type){ //$connect_type = '#' or '#' etc
$connectword = getConnect($i,$str);
$connect_array[$connect_counter] = $connectword;
$connect_counter++;
}
}
if(!empty($connect_array)){
return $connect_array;
}
}
function getConnect($tag_index,$str){
$str = trim($str).' ';
for($j = $tag_index; $j<strlen($str);$j++) {
$chr = $str[$j];
if($chr==' '){
$hashword = substr($str,$tag_index+1,$j-$tag_index);
return trim($hashword);
}
}
}
$at = extractConnect("#stackoverflow is great. #google.com is the best search engine","#");
$hash = extractConnect("#stackoverflow is great. #google.com is the best search engine","#");
print_r($at);
print_r($hash);
What this method does is it extracts # or # from a string and return an array of those words.
e.g input #stackoverflow is great. #google.com is the best search engine and outputs this
Array ( [0] => google.com ) Array ( [0] => stackoverflow )
But it seems like this method is to slow is there any alternative ?

Answer 1

You could use a regex to achieve this:
/<char>(\S+)\b/i
Explanation:
/ - starting delimiter
<char> - the character you're searching for (passed as a function argument)
(\S+) - any non-whitespace character, one or more times
\b - word boundary
i - case insensitivity modifier
/ - ending delimiter
Function:
function extractConnect($string, $char) {
$search = preg_quote($char, '/');
if (preg_match('/'.$search.'(\S+)\b/i', $string, $matches)) {
return [$matches[1]]; // Return an array containing the match
}
return false;
}
With your strings, this would produce the following output:
array(1) {
[0]=>
string(10) "google.com"
}
array(1) {
[0]=>
string(13) "stackoverflow"
}
Demo

Answer 2

You can do it like this:
<?php
function extractConnect($strSource, $tags) {
$matches = array();
$tags = str_split($tags);
$strSource = explode(' ', $strSource);
array_walk_recursive($strSource, function(&$item) {
$item = trim($item);
});
foreach ($strSource as $strPart) {
if (in_array($strPart[0], $tags)) {
$matches[$strPart[0]][] = substr($strPart, 1);
}
}
return $matches;
}
var_dump(extractConnect(
"#stackoverflow is great. #twitter is good. #google.com is the best search engine",
"##"
));
Outputs:

Answer 3

This seemed to work for me. Provide it with the symbol you want.
function get_stuff($str) {
$result = array();
$words = explode(' ', $str);
$symbols = array('#', '#');
foreach($words as $word) {
if (in_array($word[0], $symbols)) {
$result[$word[0]][] = substr($word, 1);
}
}
return $result;
}
$str = '#stackoverflow is great. #google.com is the best search engine';
print_r(get_stuff($str));
This outputs Array ( [#] => Array ( [0] => stackoverflow ) [#] => Array ( [0] => google.com ) )