If you've been around PHP for any amount of time I'm sure you're familiar with the predefined functions strstr() and stristr().
Well, you've probably also seen and/or used a few calls to the str_replace() function. As you probably realize, the str_replace() function has a MIXED variable type for all the argument of the function, yet it's still called str_replace().
MIXED variable types means you can pass different variable types
to the function and it still work, such as strings, arrays, etc.
So why can't strstr() and stristr() take mixed variable types? I was scratching my head and asking myself the same question. Well, wait no longer, here is a version of strstr() and stristr() combined which can also accept arrays OR strings are either argument. Here's the function:
function strFind($haystack, $needle, $case='i') {
$haystack = ( is_array($haystack) ) ? implode('', $haystack) : $haystack;
$func = ( $case == 'i' ) ? 'stristr' : 'strstr';
if ( is_array($needle) ) {
foreach($needle as $item) {
if ( $func($haystack, $item) ) {
return true;
}
}
} else {
if ( $func($haystack, $needle) ) {
return true;
}
}
return false; // Didn't find a match
} // End strFind()
Let me show you how to use it. Let's define our haystack and needle first.
$haystack = 'Hey guys!';
$needle = array('h', 'b', 'k');
$result = strFind($haystack, $needle);
In this case, the function would return true. Since by default the function searches with the case-insensitive method, it would match "h" and "H". However, this would return false:
$result = strFind($haystack, $needle, 's');
That tells it to search case-sensitively. While the actual value of the 3rd parameter doesn't matter (as long as it's not "i"), I just use "s" to make it clear what's going on.
Well, I hope you liked it.
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