startsWith() and endsWith() functions in PHP

Question

How can I write two functions that would take a string and return if it starts with the specified character/string or ends with it?

For example:

$str = '|apples}';  echo startsWith($str, '|'); //Returns true echo endsWith($str, '}'); //Returns true 

Answer 1

PHP 8.0 and higher

Since PHP 8.0 you can use the

str_starts_with Manual and

str_ends_with Manual

Example

echo str_starts_with($str, '|');

PHP before 8.0

function startsWith( $haystack, $needle ) {      $length = strlen( $needle );      return substr( $haystack, 0, $length ) === $needle; } 

function endsWith( $haystack, $needle ) {     $length = strlen( $needle );     if( !$length ) {         return true;     }     return substr( $haystack, -$length ) === $needle; } 

Answer 2

You can use substr_compare function to check start-with and ends-with:

function startsWith($haystack, $needle) {     return substr_compare($haystack, $needle, 0, strlen($needle)) === 0; } function endsWith($haystack, $needle) {     return substr_compare($haystack, $needle, -strlen($needle)) === 0; } 

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^{This should be one of the fastest solutions on PHP 7 (benchmark script). Tested against 8KB haystacks, various length needles and full, partial and no match cases. strncmp is a touch faster for starts-with but it cannot check ends-with.}