How to remove the leading character from a string?

Question

I have a input string like:

$str = ':this is a applepie :) '; 

How can I remove the first occurring : with PHP?

Desired output: this is a applepie :)

Answer 1

The substr() function will probably help you here:

 $str = substr($str, 1); 

Strings are indexed starting from 0, and this functions second parameter takes the cutstart. So make that 1, and the first char is gone.

Answer 2

To remove every : from the beginning of a string, you can use ltrim:

$str = '::f:o:'; $str = ltrim($str, ':'); var_dump($str); //=> 'f:o:'