substring in php whether words is first or last in string

Question

I have this piece of PHP to find a campaign name in string and then use substr on the occurrence of the campaign name.

 $chars = array("æ", "ø", "å");
 $replace = array("ae", "oe", "aa");

 $dash = strpos(utf8_decode($campaign["campaign_name"]), "Studiepakke");
 $decoded_name = utf8_decode($campaign["campaign_name"]);
 $id_name = str_replace($chars, $replace, trim(strtolower(substr($decoded_name, 0, ($dash-2)))));

 $lpage_pos = strripos($id_name, $_GET["lpage"]);
 $short_name = strtolower(utf8_decode($campaign["adset_name"]));
 $dash_pos = strpos($short_name, " - ");

$campaign["campaign_name"] can look like "aalborg - studiepakke", but it can also be "studiepakke - aalborg"

How can I use substr and strpos so it is unimportant whether "Studiepakke" is at the beginning or at the end of the string. My end result will always be

"aalborg".

Answer 1

If I get it right you may want to split strings where the dash is. For this purpose, use

$substrings = explode(" - ", $string);

This will give you an array of substrings, you can then check which one is the searched one.

You could also use string replace to replace the unwanted part with an empty string.

str_replace()
str_ireplace() // case insensitive