Remove first and last char from string

Question

I have this:

$dataList = "*one*two*three*"; $list = explode("*", $dataList); echo"<pre>";print_r($list);echo"</pre>"; 

which outputs:

> Array ( >     [0] =>  >     [1] => one >     [2] => two >     [3] => three >     [4] =>  ) 

How do I strip the fist and last * in the string before exploding?

Answer 1

Using trim:

trim($dataList, '*'); 

This will remove all * characters (even if there are more than one!) from the end and the beginning of the string.

Answer 2

Some other possibilities:

Using substr:

$dataList = substr($dataList, 1, -1); 

You can also choose to not remove the * from the string but rather remove the empty array values which will always be the first and last element. Using array functions array_pop() and array_shift():

$arrData = array_pop(array_shift($arrData));