Extracting part of a string before colon

I need to extract numbers that appear before a colon in a string

for instance:

14:hey-the-bear

or

1432:happy-candy

I need to grab the 14 or 1432

 

A tough one... or not.

$string = '1432:happy-candy';
echo (int) $string;
// Can use typecasting

echo ' ' , PHP_EOL;

echo intval('14:hey-the-bear');
// Or intval, or any other similar function/cast that does the same thing.

PHP:

Dan.

 

Or you can do it with regular expressions.

$string = '1432:happy-candy';
preg_match('~(\d+)\:~', $string, $matches);
if (isset($matches[1])) {
	// $matches[1] is what you're looking for
}

PHP:

 

I was waiting for this so I could criticize... You should only use the Regular expression engine when it's not possible using a single function call, as initializing it is VERY slow (relatively.)

I would post a normal functional way but I'm drunk atm, so I'm thinking better of it...

Dan.

 

or using the strstr() function
$string = '1432:happy-candy';
$number = strstr($string, ':', true);

 

You can try this:

$string = "14:hey-the-bear";
echo strstr($string, ':', true);

//should return the number 14

PHP:

 

To the last 2 posts, that will only work on PHP 5.3+ - I'm all for using it, but fails miserably for portability.

Dan.

 

I assume that the string is of the only format you have given and the number is BEFORE the colon.

$parts = explode (':',$string);
$number = $parts[0];
if(is_numeric($number))
{
print $number;
}

Code (markup):

This would perfectly according to info given by you.

 

Explode is what I would have suggested. I know it is good from PHP4 and up.

 

wow really great posts, which of these would be best insert the number directly into a query

 

My original IMO (but I'm biased.)

Fastest and defaults to '0' if there is no number.

 

i am sort of confused by your code though, which part of it do i use

was it all one suggestion?

 

intval($string);
OR
(int) $string;

One is a function, one is a typecast.