PHP Find and replace after in a string? - php

Question

I have some strings which contain the words LIMIT 3, 199 or LIMIT 0, 100.
Basically I want to replace the word LIMIT and everything after it in my string.
How do I do this in PHP? str_replace only replaces an item and the LIMIT text after is dynamic/
So it could be
WHEN JOHN WAS TRYING HIS SQL QUERY, HE FOUND THAT LIMIT, 121
// RETURN WOULD BE
WHEN JOHN WAS TRYING HIS SQL QUERY, HE FOUND THAT
WHEN JOHN TRIED LIMIT 343, 333 HE FOUND
// RETURN WOULD BE
WHEN JOHN TRIED

Answer 1

Use strpos to find the position of LIMIT within the string, and then use substr to return the string up until that point. Really pretty basic string manipulation.
Or perhaps use preg_replace if you want a one-liner, though I don't think going to the regex toolchest is needed here.

Answer 2

Replace out LIMIT.+$ using preg_replace with pattern /LIMIT.+$/m
That is to say:
$string = preg_replace("/LIMIT.+$/m","",$string);

Answer 3

Use strstr or stristr (case insensitive). Will work only for versions >= php 5.3.0
$str = strstr($your_string, 'LIMIT', true);

Answer 4

As I recommend against using regexes when you don't understand them, here's a simple answer that doesn't use them (do note, I do recommend learning regexes, but they aren't easy to learn):
$output = substr($input, 0, strpos($input, 'LIMIT'))

Answer 5

You can use strstr
$break = "LIMIT";
$array = array();
$array[] = "WHEN JOHN WAS TRYING HIS SQL QUERY, HE FOUND THAT LIMIT, 121";
$array[] = "WHEN JOHN TRIED LIMIT 343, 333 HE FOUND";
echo "<pre>";
foreach ( $array as $value ) {
echo strstr($value, $break, true), PHP_EOL;
}
Output
WHEN JOHN WAS TRYING HIS SQL QUERY, HE FOUND THAT
WHEN JOHN TRIED