strpbrk
strrchr
String Functions
PHP Manual

# strpos

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

strpos — Find the position of the first occurrence of a substring in a string

### Description

mixed strpos ( string `$haystack` , mixed `$needle` [, int `$offset` = 0 ] )

Find the numeric position of the first occurrence of `needle` in the `haystack` string.

### Parameters

`haystack`

  The string to search in.

`needle`

  If `needle` is not a string, it is converted to an integer and applied as the ordinal value of a character.

`offset`

  If specified, search will start this number of characters counted from the beginning of the string. Unlike strrpos() and strripos(), the offset cannot be negative.

### Return Values

Returns the position of where the needle exists relative to the beginning of the `haystack` string (independent of offset). Also note that string positions start at 0, and not 1.

Returns `FALSE` if the needle was not found.

Warning

This function may return Boolean `FALSE`, but may also return a non-Boolean value which evaluates to `FALSE`. Please read the section on Booleans for more information. Use the === operator for testing the return value of this function.

### Examples

Example #1 Using ===

`<?php
$mystring = 'abc';
$findme = 'a';
$pos = strpos($mystring, $findme);
// Note our use of ===. Simply == would not work as expected
// because the position of 'a' was the 0th (first) character.
if ($pos === false) {
echo "The string '$findme' was not found in the string '$mystring'";
} else {
echo "The string '$findme' was found in the string '$mystring'";
echo " and exists at position $pos";
}
?>`

Example #2 Using !==

`<?php
$mystring = 'abc';
$findme = 'a';
$pos = strpos($mystring, $findme);
// The !== operator can also be used. Using != would not work as expected
// because the position of 'a' is 0. The statement (0 != false) evaluates
// to false.
if ($pos !== false) {
echo "The string '$findme' was found in the string '$mystring'";
echo " and exists at position $pos";
} else {
echo "The string '$findme' was not found in the string '$mystring'";
}
?>`

Example #3 Using an offset

`<?php
// We can search for the character, ignoring anything before the offset
$newstring = 'abcdef abcdef';
$pos = strpos($newstring, 'a', 1); // $pos = 7, not 0
?>`

### Notes

> Note: This function is binary-safe.

### See Also

- stripos() - Find the position of the first occurrence of a case-insensitive substring in a string
- strrpos() - Find the position of the last occurrence of a substring in a string
- strripos() - Find the position of the last occurrence of a case-insensitive substring in a string
- strstr() - Find the first occurrence of a string
- strpbrk() - Search a string for any of a set of characters
- substr() - Return part of a string
- preg_match() - Perform a regular expression match

strpbrk
strrchr
String Functions
PHP Manual