Hey internals,
Just wanted to follow up with the real-world data I promised for
array_str_contains().
I scanned the top 200 Composer packages (around 21,000 PHP files) to see
how people currently handle array substring searches. Here is what I found
(32 matches total):
- array_filter with str_contains: 8
- array_filter with strpos: 8
- array_filter with stripos: 6
- foreach with str_contains: 6
- array_filter with preg_match: 4
All these different (and sometimes verbose) approaches can simply be
replaced with a single, clean, and fast native call:
array_str_contains($haystack, $needle)
I’ve updated the RFC with these findings:
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/array_str_contains
If you want to check out the script or raw JSON results, I uploaded them
here:
https://gist.github.com/sepehrphpr/d4d371ba682cc43c4f258de94684cc91
Let me know what you think!
Cheers,
Sepehr
Hi Sepehr,
- array_filter with str_contains: 8
- array_filter with strpos: 8
- array_filter with stripos: 6
- foreach with str_contains: 6
- array_filter with preg_match: 4
All these different (and sometimes verbose) approaches can simply be
replaced with a single, clean, and fast native call:
array_str_contains($haystack, $needle)
I just went through the results, and found at least 15 of these which are doing extra logic that couldn't be replaced with the proposed function. There are probably more I missed, or where the extra logic isn't obvious because of the way the code is truncated in the report.
So we're looking at maybe 15 uses in 200 packages. That's still something, but it's not strong evidence that this is an extremely common task.
Regards,
Rowan Tommins
[IMSoP]
در تاریخ پنجشنبه ۳ سپتامبر ۲۰۲۶، ۲۰:۳۴ Rowan Tommins [IMSoP] <
imsop.php@rwec.co.uk> نوشت:
Hi Sepehr,
On 3 September 2026 17:18:14 BST, "سپهر محمودی" sepehrphpr@gmail.com
wrote:
- array_filter with str_contains: 8
- array_filter with strpos: 8
- array_filter with stripos: 6
- foreach with str_contains: 6
- array_filter with preg_match: 4
All these different (and sometimes verbose) approaches can simply be
replaced with a single, clean, and fast native call:
array_str_contains($haystack, $needle)I just went through the results, and found at least 15 of these which are
doing extra logic that couldn't be replaced with the proposed function.
There are probably more I missed, or where the extra logic isn't obvious
because of the way the code is truncated in the report.So we're looking at maybe 15 uses in 200 packages. That's still something,
but it's not strong evidence that this is an extremely common task.Regards,
Rowan Tommins
[IMSoP]
Hi Rowan,
Thanks for actually going through the results, that's exactly the kind of
review I was hoping for.
You're right, the scanner only detects the pattern combination, not the
full body of the closure. So those numbers represent an upper bound, and
some matches do include extra logic. I'll update the RFC to be explicit
about this instead of implying all 32 are direct replacements.
I'll also try to refine the scan to flag matches that look like a pure
substring check, and report both numbers (strict vs. loose matches) so
we can see the real lower bound too.
Thanks again,
Sepehr