Matching a Pattern in PHP

Question

I am trying to validate whether or not a string contains and starts with BA700 . I have tried using the preg_match() function in PHP but I have not had any luck. My code is below:

preg_match('/^[0-9]{3}-[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{4}$/', $search))

This does not work unfortunately. Any ideas?

UPDATES CODE:

$needle = 'BA700';
$haystack = 'BA70012345';

if (stripos($haystack, $needle)) {
    echo 'Found!';
}

This does not work for me either

Answer 1

Try with substr like

$needle = 'BA700';
$haystack = 'BA70012345';
if(substr($haystack, 0, 4) == $needle) {
    echo "Valid";
} else {
    echo "In Valid";
}

You can also check regards with the case by changing both of them in either UPPER or LOWER like

if(strtoupper(substr($haystack, 0, 4)) == $needle) {
    echo "Valid";
} else {
    echo "In Valid";
}

Answer 2

Here is how to correctly use stripos

if (stripos($haystack, $needle) !== false) {
    echo 'Found!';
}

Answer 3

Maybe I am taking this a little too literally, but:

if (strncmp($string, 'BA700', 5) === 0) {
    // Contains and begins with 'BA700'
}

If the BA700 is case-insensitive then:

if (strncasecmp($string, 'ba700', 5) === 0) {
    // Contains and begins with 'ba700'
}

There should not be much more to it than that.

The regular expression, in case you want to know, is:

if (preg_match('/^BA700/', $string) === 1) {
    // Contains and begins with 'ba700'
}