match entire string PHP

ktsirig posted this at 10:19 — 25th April 2006.

Joined: Oct 2005

Hi all!
What I want to ask might be rather silly, but I have come across it a couple of days now and don't seem to find any solution.
Consider the following variables :

$var1= "ps :Hello and welcome to greece";
$var2= "ps :Hello and";
$var3= "ps :It was nice to meeting you";

My problem is that, when I check $var2, it matches both $var1 and $var3, because , as you can see, $var3 has "ps" in it.
So, I was wondering if there is a way of matching ENTIRE $var2 and not just portions of it. In this way, it would match only $var1 and not $var3...

Greg K posted this at 08:36 — 26th April 2006.

He has: 2,145 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

What are you currently using to compare the strings?

Try strpos() (see http://www.php.net/strpos for more details)

This worked for me:

<?php
$var1= \"ps :Hello and welcome to greece\";
$var2= \"ps :Hello and\";
$var3= \"ps :It was nice to meeting you\";

if (strpos($var1,$var2)===false)
    echo \"Not Found in Var1 \n\";
else 
    echo \"Was Found in Var1 \n\";
    
if (strpos($var3,$var2)===false)
    echo \"Not Found in Var3 \n\";
else 
    echo \"Was Found in Var3 \n\";
    
?>

-Greg

CptAwesome posted this at 16:33 — 4th May 2006.

He has: 370 posts

Joined: Dec 2004

Well, what are you using for matching? ereg? why not do:
if($str == $var1)

== is an exact match...
=== is an exact match and type match

ablaye posted this at 19:57 — 4th May 2006.

They have: 140 posts

Joined: Apr 2006

Try the strcmp function. That's your best bet.

strcmp
(PHP 3, PHP 4, PHP 5)

strcmp -- Binary safe string comparison
Description
int strcmp ( string str1, string str2 )

Returns < 0 if str1 is less than str2; > 0 if str1 is greater than str2, and 0 if they are equal.

Note that this comparison is case sensitive.

Greg K posted this at 09:52 — 5th May 2006.

He has: 2,145 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

CptAwesome, your suggestion would work if the strings were the same length, from the post, he wants $var2 (ps :Hello and) to match against $var1 (ps :Hello and welcome to greece)

A direct if ($var2 == $var1) would return false. he would have to do something like:

if ($var2 == substr($var1,0,strlen($var2)))

For the strcmp, I wasn't sure, so I did a test:

<?php
   echo 'v1 vs v2 results in: ' . strcmp($var1,$var2).\"\n\";
   echo 'v3 vs v2 results in: ' . strcmp($var3,$var2).\"\n\";
   echo 'v2 vs v1 results in: ' . strcmp($var2,$var1).\"\n\";
   echo 'v2 vs v3 results in: ' . strcmp($var2,$var3).\"\n\";
?>

gave me this:

Quote: v1 vs v2 results in: 18
v3 vs v2 results in: 1
v2 vs v1 results in: -18
v2 vs v3 results in: -1

So looks like that won't work as both var1 and var3 give the same type fo results (either > 0 or < 0 depending on order give)

-Greg