在第二次出现一个字符之后和最后一次出现相同字符之前使用php返回一个字符串

Question

I have several strings similar to the following: ORG-000012 – Name of variation – Quantity: 12 Pack – $14.95

I need to remove all characters before the second hyphen and after the last hyphen with php. For example, the string above needs to return as: Name of variation – Quantity: 12 Pack

I have tried to use strpos and substr but I can't seem to get the correct setup. Please help!

Answer 1

Just use explode() , splitting by – . Then, get the second and third elements:

<?php
$description = "ORG-000012 – Name of variation – Quantity: 12 Pack – $14.95";
$descriptionArray = explode(" – ", $description);
$finalDescription = $descriptionArray[1]." – ".$descriptionArray[2];
var_dump($finalDescription); // string(39) "Name of variation – Quantity: 12 Pack"

Demo

Or, if the number of elements in between is variable, array_shift() and array_pop() the array to remove the first and last elements:

<?php
$description = "ORG-000012 – Name of variation – Quantity: 12 Pack – $14.95";
$descriptionArray = explode(" – ", $description);
array_pop($descriptionArray);
array_shift($descriptionArray);
var_dump($descriptionArray);

Demo

Answer 2

You can find the position of the first occurrence of - char using strpos and find the position of the last occurrence ot it using strrpos :

$s = 'ORG-000012 - Name of variation - Quantity: 12 Pack - $14.95';
$sub = substr($s,strpos($s, '-')+1, strrpos($s, '-')-strlen($s));
print $sub; // or print trim($sub) to remove the whitespaces

What it does is, it will print a substrinig of $s starting from one character after the first occurrence of - character, and omitting characters from last occurrence of - by passing a negative value (difference of total length of the string and position of last occurrence of - character) as length to substr .

Please note, this will print the space character before the last - as well, so you might want to trim the result as well.

Answer 3

Is possible with a reg expr, try with:

preg_match(
    '/(?<=\s–\s)(.*)(?:\s–\s)[^\s]+$/',
    'ORG-000012 – Name of variation – Quantity: 12 Pack – $14.95',
    $matches
);
echo $matches[1]; //Name of variation – Quantity: 12 Pack