Strings

Syntax

A string literal can be specified in three different ways.

• single quoted

• double quoted

• heredoc syntax

<?php
echo 'this is a simple string';

echo 'You can also have embedded newlines in 
strings this way as it is
okay to do';

// Outputs: Arnold once said: "I'll be back"
echo 'Arnold once said: "I\'ll be back"';

// Outputs: You deleted C:\*.*?
echo 'You deleted C:\\*.*?';

// Outputs: You deleted C:\*.*?
echo 'You deleted C:\*.*?';

// Outputs: This will not expand: \n a newline
echo 'This will not expand: \n a newline';

// Outputs: Variables do not $expand $either
echo 'Variables do not $expand $either';
?>

<?php
class foo {
    public $bar = <<<EOT
bar
EOT;
}
?>

<?php
$str = <<<EOD
Example of string
spanning multiple lines
using heredoc syntax.
EOD;

/* More complex example, with variables. */
class foo
{
    var $foo;
    var $bar;

    function foo()
    {
        $this->foo = 'Foo';
        $this->bar = array('Bar1', 'Bar2', 'Bar3');
    }
}

$foo = new foo();
$name = 'MyName';

echo <<<EOT
My name is "$name". I am printing some $foo->foo.
Now, I am printing some {$foo->bar[1]}.
This should print a capital 'A': \x41
EOT;
?>

<?php
$beer = 'Heineken';
echo "$beer's taste is great"; // works, "'" is an invalid character for varnames
echo "He drank some $beers";   // won't work, 's' is a valid character for varnames
echo "He drank some ${beer}s"; // works
echo "He drank some {$beer}s"; // works
?>

<?php
// These examples are specific to using arrays inside of strings.
// When outside of a string, always quote your array string keys 
// and do not use {braces} when outside of strings either.

// Let's show all errors
error_reporting(E_ALL);

$fruits = array('strawberry' => 'red', 'banana' => 'yellow');

// Works but note that this works differently outside string-quotes
echo "A banana is $fruits[banana].";

// Works
echo "A banana is {$fruits['banana']}.";

// Works but PHP looks for a constant named banana first
// as described below.
echo "A banana is {$fruits[banana]}.";

// Won't work, use braces.  This results in a parse error.
echo "A banana is $fruits['banana'].";

// Works
echo "A banana is " . $fruits['banana'] . ".";

// Works
echo "This square is $square->width meters broad.";

// Won't work. For a solution, see the complex syntax.
echo "This square is $square->width00 centimeters broad.";
?>

<?php
// Let's show all errors
error_reporting(E_ALL);

$great = 'fantastic';

// Won't work, outputs: This is { fantastic}
echo "This is { $great}";

// Works, outputs: This is fantastic
echo "This is {$great}";
echo "This is ${great}";

// Works
echo "This square is {$square->width}00 centimeters broad."; 

// Works
echo "This works: {$arr[4][3]}";

// This is wrong for the same reason as $foo[bar] is wrong 
// outside a string.  In other words, it will still work but
// because PHP first looks for a constant named foo, it will
// throw an error of level E_NOTICE (undefined constant).
echo "This is wrong: {$arr[foo][3]}"; 

// Works.  When using multi-dimensional arrays, always use
// braces around arrays when inside of strings
echo "This works: {$arr['foo'][3]}";

// Works.
echo "This works: " . $arr['foo'][3];

echo "You can even write {$obj->values[3]->name}";

echo "This is the value of the var named $name: {${$name}}";
?>

<?php
// Get the first character of a string
$str = 'This is a test.';
$first = $str[0];

// Get the third character of a string
$third = $str[2];

// Get the last character of a string.
$str = 'This is still a test.';
$last = $str[strlen($str)-1]; 

// Modify the last character of a string
$str = 'Look at the sea';
$str[strlen($str)-1] = 'e';

// Alternative method using {} is deprecated as of PHP 6
$third = $str{2};

?>

Useful functions and operators

Strings may be concatenated using the '.' (dot) operator. Note that the '+' (addition) operator will not work for this. Please see String operators for more information.

There are a lot of useful functions for string modification.

See the string functions section for general functions, the regular expression functions for advanced find&replacing (in two tastes: Perl and POSIX extended).

There are also functions for URL-strings, and functions to encrypt/decrypt strings (mcrypt and mhash).

Finally, if you still didn't find what you're looking for, see also the character type functions.

Converting to string

You can convert a value to a string using the (string) cast, or the strval() function. String conversion is automatically done in the scope of an expression for you where a string is needed. This happens when you use the echo() or print() functions, or when you compare a variable value to a string. Reading the manual sections on Types and Type Juggling will make the following clearer. See also settype().

A boolean TRUE value is converted to the string "1", the FALSE value is represented as "" (empty string). This way you can convert back and forth between boolean and string values.

An integer or a floating point number (float) is converted to a string representing the number with its digits (including the exponent part for floating point numbers).

Arrays are always converted to the string "Array", so you cannot dump out the contents of an array with echo() or print() to see what is inside them. To view one element, you'd do something like echo $arr['foo']. See below for tips on dumping/viewing the entire contents.

Objects are always converted to the string "Object". If you would like to print out the member variable values of an object for debugging reasons, read the paragraphs below. If you would like to find out the class name of which an object is an instance of, use get_class(). As of PHP 5, __toString() method is used if applicable.

Resources are always converted to strings with the structure "Resource id #1" where 1 is the unique number of the resource assigned by PHP during runtime. If you would like to get the type of the resource, use get_resource_type().

NULL is always converted to an empty string.

As you can see above, printing out the arrays, objects or resources does not provide you any useful information about the values themselves. Look at the functions print_r() and var_dump() for better ways to print out values for debugging.

You can also convert PHP values to strings to store them permanently. This method is called serialization, and can be done with the function serialize(). You can also serialize PHP values to XML structures, if you have WDDX support in your PHP setup.

String conversion to numbers

When a string is evaluated as a numeric value, the resulting value and type are determined as follows.

The string will evaluate as a float if it contains any of the characters '.', 'e', or 'E'. Otherwise, it will evaluate as an integer.

The value is given by the initial portion of the string. If the string starts with valid numeric data, this will be the value used. Otherwise, the value will be 0 (zero). Valid numeric data is an optional sign, followed by one or more digits (optionally containing a decimal point), followed by an optional exponent. The exponent is an 'e' or 'E' followed by one or more digits.

<?php
$foo = 1 + "10.5";                // $foo is float (11.5)
$foo = 1 + "-1.3e3";              // $foo is float (-1299)
$foo = 1 + "bob-1.3e3";           // $foo is integer (1)
$foo = 1 + "bob3";                // $foo is integer (1)
$foo = 1 + "10 Small Pigs";       // $foo is integer (11)
$foo = 4 + "10.2 Little Piggies"; // $foo is float (14.2)
$foo = "10.0 pigs " + 1;          // $foo is float (11)
$foo = "10.0 pigs " + 1.0;        // $foo is float (11)     
?>

For more information on this conversion, see the Unix manual page for strtod(3).

If you would like to test any of the examples in this section, you can cut and paste the examples and insert the following line to see for yourself what's going on:

<?php
echo "\$foo==$foo; type is " . gettype ($foo) . "<br />\n";
?>

Do not expect to get the code of one character by converting it to integer (as you would do in C for example). Use the functions ord() and chr() to convert between charcodes and characters.