It took me some time to understand the way this function works…
I’ve compiled my own explanation with my own words that is more understandable for me personally than the official one or those that can be found in different tutorials on the web.
Perhaps, it will save someone several minutes…
<?php
strspn(string $haystack, string $char_list [, int $start [, int $length]])
?>
The way it works:
- searches for a segment of $haystack that consists entirely from supplied through the second argument chars
- $haystack must start from one of the chars supplied through $char_list, otherwise the function will find nothing
- as soon as the function encounters a char that was not mentioned in $chars it understands that the segment is over and stops (it doesn’t search for the second, third and so on segments)
- finally, it measures the segment’s length and return it (i.e. length)
In other words it finds a span (only the first one) in the string that consists entirely form chars supplied in $chars_list and returns its length
strspn
(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)
strspn — Trova la lunghezza di un testo che corrisponde alla maschera data
Descrizione
Restituisce la lunghezza di un segmento di
str1 che contiene completamente i caratteri
presenti in str2.
Il seguente codice:
<?php
$var = strspn("42 is the answer, what is the question ...", "1234567890");
?>
Dal PHP 4.3.0, strspn() accetta altri due parametri
interi opzionali: start che può essere usato per
indicare la posizione di inizio da cui cercare, e
length per indicare la lunghezza della stringa da esaminare.
<?php
echo strspn("foo", "o", 1, 2); // 2
?>Nota: Questa funzione è binary-safe (gestisce correttamente i file binari)
Vedere anche strcspn().
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User Contributed Notes 9 notes
barry dot balkowski at gmail dot com ¶
16 years ago
AT-HE (at_he.hotmail) ¶
14 years ago
you can use this function with strlen to check illegal characters, string lenght must be the same than strspn (characters from my string contained in another)
<?php
$digits='0123456789';
if (strlen($phone) != strspn($phone,$digits))
echo "illegal characters";
?>
B Crawford ¶
17 years ago
This function is significantly faster for checking illegal characters than the equivalent preg_match() method.
mrsohailkhan at gmail dot com ¶
13 years ago
very dificult to get from the definition directly, while i search for that,i came to know that
strspn() will tell you the length of a string consisting entirely of the set of characters in accept set. That is, it starts walking down str until it finds a character that is not in the set (that is, a character that is not to be accepted), and returns the length of the string so far.
and
strcspn() works much the same way, except that it walks down str until it finds a character in the reject set (that is, a character that is to be rejected.) It then returns the length of the string so far.
<?php
$acceptSet = "aeiou";
$rejectSet = "y";
$str1 ="a banana";
$str2 ="the bolivian navy on manuvers in the south pacific";
echo $n = strspn($str1,$acceptSet);// $n == 1, just "a"
echo $n = strcspn($str2,$rejectSet);// n = 16, "the bolivian nav"
?>
hope this example will help in understanding the concept of strspn() and strcspn().
Dmitry Mazur ¶
15 years ago
The second parameter is a set of allowed characters.
strspn will return an zero-based index of a first non-allowed character.
bob at example dot com ¶
12 years ago
Quick way to check if a string consists entirely of characters within the mask is to compare strspn with strlen eg:
<?php
$path = $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'];
if (strspn($path,'/') == strlen($path)) {
//PATH_INFO is empty
}
?>
lincoln dot mahmud at gmail dot com ¶
4 years ago
Get Group match letter
<?php
$s= 'aaabbbcceeffaaeeeaaabbzmmm';
function groupby( $s ){
static $a = [];
static $i = 0;
$o = strspn( $s, $s[$i], $i);
$a[ $i ] = [ $s[$i] => $o ];
$i += $o;
if( $i < strlen($s) ) {
groupby($s);
}
return $a;
}
print_r(groupby($s));
?>
nino dot skopac at gmail dot com ¶
6 years ago
strspon and preg_match seem to be equally fast for validating numbers:
<?php
$testValInvalid = 'foobar123^^';
$testValValid = '12346';
$allowedChars = '1234567890';
$t1 = microtime(true);
for ($i = 0; $i < 1000000; $i++) {
assert(strspn($testValInvalid, $allowedChars) != strlen($testValInvalid));
assert(strspn($testValValid, $allowedChars) == strlen($testValValid));
}
print 'Time taken for strspon: ' . (microtime(true) - $t1);
print PHP_EOL;
$t1 = microtime(true);
for ($i = 0; $i < 1000000; $i++) {
assert(preg_match('/^[0-9]+$/', $testValInvalid) === 0);
assert(preg_match('/^[0-9]+$/', $testValValid));
}
print 'Time taken for preg_match: ' . (microtime(true) - $t1);
print PHP_EOL;
/**
nino-mcb:hosp_web ninoskopac$ php test.php
Time taken for strspon: 3.24165391922
Time taken for preg_match: 3.1820080280304
nino-mcb:hosp_web ninoskopac$ php test.php
Time taken for strspon: 3.1806418895721
Time taken for preg_match: 3.2244551181793
*/
?>
ayaou dot mohammed at gmail dot com ¶
5 years ago
This function doesn't work with non ASCII characters
Exemple:
<?php
$subject = "Comment ça va ma chérie";
$mask = "éèçà";
echo strspn($subject,$mask); // Echo 0
?>
See, we expected 1 but 0 was the correct result
