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To: Alex Baumann <php@ikgcom.de>
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Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2010 15:06:31 +0200
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Built-in function: between
From: johannes@schlueters.de (Johannes =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Schl=FCter?=)

On Sat, 2010-09-04 at 21:52 +0200, Alex Baumann wrote:
> Hi!
> Since I'm using this function in each project I'm working on, how about 
> making it a built-in function?
> 
> function between ($text, $between, $and) {
>      $start = strpos($text, $between)+strlen($between);
>      if ($start === false) return "";
>      $end = strpos($text, $and, $start);
>      if ($end === false) return "";
>      return substr($text, $start, $end-$start);
> }
> 
> Basicly this function returns a substring given in a text $text between 
> two strings, $between and $and, occuring in $text.
> 
> Here are some examples:
> echo between("PHP is awesome!", "PHP ", " awesome!");
>  > is
> echo between("PHP is awesome!", "P", "o");
>  > HP is awes
> echo between("PHP is awesome!", "PHP ", "great!");
>  >

preg_match('/PHP (.*) swesome/', 'PHP is awesome', $matches);

works nicely, we won't add special purpose functions for things that can
easily be done already.

> As mentioned above, this function is very useful, for example when 
> parsing formated input data like html files, and everyone I told about 
> it adopted it and is very thankful.

For parsing DOM or tidy are better.

johannes