startsWith and endsWith functions in PHP

Question

How can I write two functions that would take a string and return if it starts with the specified character string or ends with it   For example    str     apples     echo startsWith  str          Returns true echo endsWith  str          Returns true

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Do it faster  function startsWith  haystack  needle        if  needle    quot  quot   return true      if  haystack 0  lt  gt  needle 0   return false     ------------------------- speed boost      return  0   substr compare  haystack  needle 0 strlen  needle        That extra line  comparing the first character of the strings  can make the false case return immediately  therefore making many of your comparisons a lot faster  7x faster when I measured    In the true case you pay virtually no price in performance for that single line so I think it s worth including    Also  in practice  when you test many strings for a specific starting chunk  most comparisons will fail since in a typical case you re looking for something   NOTE  the bug in  Tino s comment below has aleady been fixed As for strings vs integers If you want to force string comparison  that is  you expect startsWith  quot 1234 quot  12  to be true   you ll need some typecasting  function startsWith  haystack  needle        if  needle    quot  quot   return true       haystack    string  haystack       needle      string  needle      if  haystack 0  lt  gt  needle 0   return false     ------------------------- speed boost      return  0   substr compare  haystack  needle 0 strlen  needle        I don t think it s necessary but it s an interesting edge case  leading to questions like  quot does boolean true begin with a t  quot  - so you decide  but make sure you decide for good

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I realize this has been finished  but you may want to look at strncmp as it allows you to put the length of the string to compare against  so   function startsWith  haystack   needle   case true        if   case          return strncasecmp  haystack   needle  strlen  needle      0      else         return strncmp  haystack   needle  strlen  needle      0

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Many of the previous answers will work just as well  However  this is possibly as short as you can make it and have it do what you desire  You just state that you d like it to  return true   So I ve included solutions that returns boolean true false and the textual true false      boolean true false function startsWith  haystack   needle        return strpos  haystack   needle      0   1   0     function endsWith  haystack   needle        return stripos  haystack   needle      0   1   0         textual true false function startsWith  haystack   needle        return strpos  haystack   needle      0    true     false      function endsWith  haystack   needle        return stripos  haystack   needle      0    true     false

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Here   s an efficient solution for PHP 4  You could get faster results if on PHP 5 by using substr compare instead of strcasecmp substr         function stringBeginsWith  haystack   beginning   caseInsensitivity   false        if   caseInsensitivity          return strncasecmp  haystack   beginning  strlen  beginning       0      else         return strncmp  haystack   beginning  strlen  beginning       0     function stringEndsWith  haystack   ending   caseInsensitivity   false        if   caseInsensitivity          return strcasecmp substr  haystack  strlen  haystack  - strlen  ending     haystack      0      else         return strpos  haystack   ending  strlen  haystack  - strlen  ending       false

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I usually end up going with a library like underscore-php these days    require once  vendor autoload php      use if needed use Underscore Types String     str    there is a string   echo  String  startsWith  str   the         1 echo  String  endsWith  str   ring        1      The library is full of other handy functions

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Here are two functions that don t introduce a temporary string  which could be useful when needles are substantially big   function startsWith  haystack   needle        return strncmp  haystack   needle  strlen  needle       0     function endsWith  haystack   needle        return  needle           substr compare  haystack   needle  -strlen  needle       0

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You can use substr compare function to check start-with and ends-with   function startsWith  haystack   needle        return substr compare  haystack   needle  0  strlen  needle       0    function endsWith  haystack   needle        return substr compare  haystack   needle  -strlen  needle       0        This should be one of the fastest solutions on PHP 7  benchmark script   Tested against 8KB haystacks  various length needles and full  partial and no match cases  strncmp is a touch faster for starts-with but it cannot check ends-with

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The substr function can return false in many special cases  so here is my version  which deals with these issues   function startsWith   haystack   needle      return  needle        substr   haystack  0  strlen   needle        substr s false   gt  empty string    function endsWith   haystack   needle       len   strlen   needle      return  needle        substr   haystack  - len   len         len 0     Tests  true means good    var dump  startsWith          var dump  startsWith  1        var dump  startsWith     1     var dump  startsWith  1   1     var dump  startsWith  1234   12     var dump  startsWith  1234   34     var dump  startsWith  12   1234     var dump  startsWith  34   1234     var dump  ---    var dump  endsWith          var dump  endsWith  1        var dump  endsWith     1     var dump  endsWith  1   1     var dump  endsWith  1234   12     var dump  endsWith  1234   34     var dump  endsWith  12   1234     var dump  endsWith  34   1234       Also  the substr compare function also worth looking  http   www php net manual en function substr-compare php

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Short and easy-to-understand one-liners without regular expressions   startsWith   is straight forward   function startsWith  haystack   needle       return  strpos  haystack   needle      0       endsWith   uses the slightly fancy and slow strrev     function endsWith  haystack   needle       return  strpos strrev  haystack   strrev  needle       0

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This may work  function startsWith  haystack   needle         return substr  haystack  0  strlen  needle       needle      Source  https   stackoverflow com a 4419658

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Focusing on startswith  if you are sure strings are not empty  adding a test on the first char  before the comparison  the strlen  etc   speeds things up a bit   function startswith5b  haystack   needle        return   haystack 0    needle 0   strncmp  haystack   needle  strlen  needle       0 FALSE      It is somehow  20 -30   faster  Adding another char test  like  haystack 1     needle 1  does not seem to speedup things much  may even slow down       seems faster than    Conditional operator  a  b c seems faster than if a  b  else c     For those asking  why not use strpos   calling other solutions  unnecessary work     strpos is fast  but it is not the right tool for this job   To understand  here is a little simulation as an example   Search a12345678c inside bcdefga12345678xbbbbb     bbbbba12345678c   What the computer does  inside        With strccmp  etc         is a   b  NO     return false        With strpos      is a   b  NO -- iterating in haysack     is a   c  NO     is a   d  NO              is a   g  NO     is a   g  NO     is a   a  YES     is 1   1  YES -- iterating in needle     is 2   3  YES     is 4   4  YES              is 8   8  YES     is c   x  NO  oh God      is a   1  NO -- iterating in haysack again     is a   2  NO     is a   3  NO     is a   4  NO              is a   x  NO     is a   b  NO     is a   b  NO     is a   b  NO     is a   b  NO     is a   b  NO     is a   b  NO     is a   b  NO                 may many times                is a   b  NO     is a   a  YES -- iterating in needle again     is 1   1  YES     is 2   3  YES     is 4   4  YES     is 8   8  YES     is c   c  YES YES YES I have found the same string  yay      was it at position 0  NOPE     What you mean NO  So the string I found is useless  YEs      Damn      return false   Assuming strlen does not iterate the whole string  but even in that case  this is not convenient at all

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You also can use regular expressions   function endsWith  haystack   needle   case true      return preg match       needle          case          i     haystack

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Based on James Black s answer  here is its endsWith version   function startsWith  haystack   needle   case true        if   case          return strncmp  haystack   needle  strlen  needle      0      else         return strncasecmp  haystack   needle  strlen  needle      0     function endsWith  haystack   needle   case true         return startsWith strrev  haystack  strrev  needle   case        Note  I have swapped the if-else part for James Black s startsWith function  because strncasecmp is actually the case-insensitive version of strncmp

User · Answer

Why not the following     How to check if a string begins with another string  haystack    valuehaystack    needle    value   if  strpos  haystack   needle      0       echo  Found      needle     at the beginning of      haystack            Output      Found value at the beginning of valuehaystack    Keep in mind  strpos will return false if the needle was not found in the haystack  and will return 0 if  and only if  needle was found at index 0  AKA the beginning    And here s endsWith    haystack    valuehaystack    needle    haystack      If index of the needle plus the length of the needle is the same length as the entire haystack  if  strpos  haystack   needle    strlen  needle      strlen  haystack        echo  Found      needle     at the end of      haystack            In this scenario there is no need for a function startsWith   as   strpos  stringToSearch   doesItStartWithThis      0    will return true or false accurately   It seems odd it s this simple with all the wild functions running rampant here

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Here s a multi-byte safe version of the accepted answer  it works fine for UTF-8 strings   function startsWith  haystack   needle         length   mb strlen  needle   UTF-8        return  mb substr  haystack  0   length   UTF-8        needle      function endsWith  haystack   needle         length   mb strlen  needle   UTF-8        return  length     0             mb substr  haystack  - length   length   UTF-8        needle

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function startsWith   haystack   needle           length   strlen   needle         return substr   haystack  0   length        needle     function endsWith   haystack   needle          length   strlen   needle        if    length             return true            return substr   haystack  - length        needle     Use this if you don t want to use a regex

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You can use the fnmatch function for this      Starts with  fnmatch  prefix     haystack      Ends with  fnmatch   suffix    haystack

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If speed is important for you  try this  I believe it is the fastest method  Works only for strings and if  haystack is only 1 character function startsWithChar  needle   haystack       return   needle      haystack 0       function endsWithChar  needle   haystack       return   needle      haystack strlen  haystack  - 1        str   apples    echo startsWithChar      str     Returns true echo endsWithChar      str     Returns true echo startsWithChar      str     Returns false echo endsWithChar      str     Returns false

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PHP 8 update PHP 8 includes new str starts with and str ends with functions that finally provide a performant and convenient solution to this problem   str    quot beginningMiddleEnd quot   if  str starts with  str   quot beg quot    echo  quot printed n quot   if  str starts with  str   quot Beg quot    echo  quot not printed n quot   if  str ends with  str   quot End quot    echo  quot printed n quot   if  str ends with  str   quot end quot    echo  quot not printed n quot    The RFC for this feature provides more information  and also a discussion of the merits and problems of obvious  and not-so-obvious  userland implementations

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in short   function startsWith  str   needle      return substr  str  0  strlen  needle        needle     function endsWith  str   needle       length   strlen  needle      return   length    substr  str  -  length       needle

User · Answer

I would do it like this        function startWith  haystack  needle                 if substr  haystack 0  strlen  needle      needle                return true               function endWith  haystack  needle                 if substr  haystack  -strlen  needle      needle                return true

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Updated 23-Aug-2016  Functions  function substr startswith  haystack   needle        return substr  haystack  0  strlen  needle        needle     function preg match startswith  haystack   needle        return preg match       preg quote  needle           A    haystack   gt  0     function substr compare startswith  haystack   needle        return substr compare  haystack   needle  0  strlen  needle       0     function strpos startswith  haystack   needle        return strpos  haystack   needle      0     function strncmp startswith  haystack   needle        return strncmp  haystack   needle  strlen  needle       0     function strncmp startswith2  haystack   needle        return  haystack 0       needle 0            strncmp  haystack   needle  strlen  needle       0           false      Tests  echo  generating tests   for  i   0   i  lt  100000     i        if  i   2500     0  echo           test cases               random bytes random int 1  7000            random bytes random int 1  3000             echo  done  n      functions     substr startswith    preg match startswith    substr compare startswith    strpos startswith    strncmp startswith    strncmp startswith2     results        foreach  functions as  func         start   microtime true       foreach  test cases as  tc             func     tc              results  func     microtime true  -  start    1000     asort  results    foreach  results as  func   gt   time        echo   func      number format  time  1      ms n       Results  PHP 7 0 9    Sorted fastest to slowest   strncmp startswith2  40 2 ms strncmp startswith  42 9 ms substr compare startswith  44 5 ms substr startswith  48 4 ms strpos startswith  138 7 ms preg match startswith  13 152 4 ms   Results  PHP 5 3 29    Sorted fastest to slowest   strncmp startswith2  477 9 ms strpos startswith  522 1 ms strncmp startswith  617 1 ms substr compare startswith  706 7 ms substr startswith  756 8 ms preg match startswith  10 200 0 ms   startswith benchmark php

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Fastest endsWith   solution    Checks if a string ends in a string function endsWith  haystack   needle        return substr  haystack -strlen  needle      needle     Benchmark    This answer function endsWith  haystack   needle        return substr  haystack -strlen  needle      needle       Accepted answer function endsWith2  haystack   needle         length   strlen  needle        return  length     0         substr  haystack  - length       needle        Second most-voted answer function endsWith3  haystack   needle           search forward starting from end minus needle length characters     if   needle                   return true             diff    strlen  haystack  -  strlen  needle       return  diff  gt   0  amp  amp  strpos  haystack   needle   diff      false       Regex answer function endsWith4  haystack   needle        return preg match       preg quote  needle                haystack      function timedebug          test   10000000        time1   microtime true       for   i 0   i  lt   test   i               tmp   endsWith  TestShortcode    Shortcode               time2   microtime true        result1    time2 -  time1       for   i 0   i  lt   test   i               tmp   endsWith2  TestShortcode    Shortcode               time3   microtime true        result2    time3 -  time2       for   i 0   i  lt   test   i               tmp   endsWith3  TestShortcode    Shortcode               time4   microtime true        result3    time4 -  time3       for   i 0   i  lt   test   i               tmp   endsWith4  TestShortcode    Shortcode               time5   microtime true        result4    time5 -  time4       echo  test  x endsWith     result1   seconds   This answer lt br gt        echo  test  x endsWith2     result4   seconds   Accepted answer lt br gt        echo  test  x endsWith3     result2   seconds   Second most voted answer lt br gt        echo  test  x endsWith4     result3   seconds   Regex answer lt br gt        exit    timedebug     Benchmark Results  10000000x endsWith  1 5760900974274 seconds   This answer 10000000x endsWith2  3 7102129459381 seconds   Accepted answer 10000000x endsWith3  1 8731069564819 seconds   Second most voted answer 10000000x endsWith4  2 1521229743958 seconds   Regex answer

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I hope that the below answer may be efficient and also simple    content    The main string to search    search    T     For compare the begining string with case insensitive   if stripos  content   search      0  echo  Yes   else echo  No      For compare the begining string with case sensitive   if strpos  content   search      0  echo  Yes   else echo  No      For compare the ending string with case insensitive   if stripos strrev  content   strrev  search       0  echo  Yes   else echo  No      For compare the ending string with case sensitive   if strpos strrev  content   strrev  search       0  echo  Yes   else echo  No

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For PHP 8 or newer  use the str starts with function  str starts with  http   www google com    http

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Not sure why this is so difficult for people  Substr does a great job and is efficient as you don t need to search the whole string if it doesn t match   Additionally  since I m not checking integer values but comparing strings I don t have to necessarily have to worry about the strict     case  However      is a good habit to get into   function startsWith  haystack  needle      substring  haystack 0 strlen  needle       needle    return true       return false     function endsWith  haystack  needle      if substring  haystack -strlen  needle       needle    return true       return false      or even better optimized   function startsWith  haystack  needle      return substring  haystack 0 strlen  needle       needle      function endsWith  haystack  needle      return substring  haystack -strlen  needle       needle

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You can use strpos and strrpos     bStartsWith   strpos  sHaystack   sNeedle     0   bEndsWith   strrpos  sHaystack   sNeedle     strlen  sHaystack -strlen  sNeedle

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ends with   strrchr  text           Ends with dot  start with    0     strpos  text            Starts with dot

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PHP 8 0 As of PHP 8 0 there are two new methods implemented  str starts with and str ends with  They are case-sensitive though  The functions return true or false   str    apples    var dump str starts with  str   a        bool true  var dump str starts with  str   A        bool false   var dump str ends with  str   s        bool true  var dump str ends with  str   S        bool false   Until PHP 8 0 The fastest startsWith function in  mpen answer  https   stackoverflow com a 7168986 7082164 The fastest endsWith function in  Lucas Bustamante answer  https   stackoverflow com a 51491517 7082164

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No-copy and no-intern-loop   function startsWith string  string  string  start   bool       return strrpos  string   start  - strlen  string       false     function endsWith string  string  string  end   bool       return   offset   strlen  string  - strlen  end    gt   0       amp  amp  strpos  string   end   offset      false

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The answer by mpen is incredibly thorough  but  unfortunately  the provided benchmark has a very important and detrimental oversight   Because every byte in needles and haystacks is completely random  the probability that a needle-haystack pair will differ on the very first byte is 99 609375   which means that  on average  about 99609 of the 100000 pairs will differ on the very first byte  In other words  the benchmark is heavily biased towards startswith implementations which check the first byte explicitly  as strncmp startswith2 does   If the test-generating loop is instead implemented as follows   echo  generating tests   for  i   0   i  lt  100000     i        if  i   2500     0  echo            haystack length   random int 1  7000        haystack   random bytes  haystack length         needle length   random int 1  3000        overlap length   min random int 0   needle length    haystack length        needle     needle length  gt   overlap length            substr  haystack  0   overlap length    random bytes  needle length -  overlap length            substr  haystack  0   needle length         test cases       haystack   needle     echo   done  lt br   gt      the benchmark results tell a slightly different story   strncmp startswith  223 0 ms substr startswith  228 0 ms substr compare startswith  238 0 ms strncmp startswith2  253 0 ms strpos startswith  349 0 ms preg match startswith  20 828 7 ms   Of course  this benchmark may still not be perfectly unbiased  but it tests the efficiency of the algorithms when given partially matching needles as well

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This question already has many answers  but in some cases you can settle for something simpler than all of them  If the string you re looking for is known  hardcoded   you can use regular expressions without any quoting etc   Check if a string starts with  ABC    preg match    ABC     myString          here means beginning of string   ends with  ABC    preg match   ABC      myString          here means end of string   In my simple case  I wanted to check if a string ends with slash   preg match          myPath        Use     as delimiter instead of escaping slash   The advantage  since it s very short and simple  you don t have to define a function  such as endsWith    as shown above   But again -- this is not a solution for every case  just this very specific one

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The regex functions above  but with the other tweaks also suggested above    function startsWith  needle   haystack         return preg match        preg quote  needle               haystack        function endsWith  needle   haystack         return preg match       preg quote  needle                haystack

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function startsWith  haystack   needle   case   true        if   case            return  strcmp substr  haystack  0  strlen  needle     needle      0             return  strcasecmp substr  haystack  0  strlen  needle     needle      0      function endsWith  haystack   needle   case   true        if   case            return  strcmp substr  haystack  strlen  haystack  - strlen  needle     needle      0             return  strcasecmp substr  haystack  strlen  haystack  - strlen  needle     needle      0       Credit To   Check if a string ends with another string  Check if a string begins with another string

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All answers so far seem to do loads of unnecessary work  strlen calculations  string allocations  substr   etc  The  strpos  and  stripos  functions return the index of the first occurrence of  needle in  haystack   function startsWith  haystack  needle  case true        if   case          return strpos  haystack   needle  0      0       return stripos  haystack   needle  0      0     function endsWith  haystack  needle  case true         expectedPosition   strlen  haystack  - strlen  needle        if   case          return strrpos  haystack   needle  0       expectedPosition       return strripos  haystack   needle  0       expectedPosition

[php] startsWith() and endsWith() functions in PHP

Do it faster:

As for strings vs integers

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