Explode and get a value in one line of code

Question

Can you write the following in one line of code?

$foo = explode(":", $foo);
$foo = $foo[0];

Cantoris

See: #13609 – Turkoman

In PHP 5.4 you can! – Halvorson

Answer 1

you could use stristr for this:

$foo = stristr($foo,":",true);

where true sets it to give you everything before the first instance of ":"

Fibster

how can i get 2nd element using this ? it throws first element only. – Helle

Answer 2

As an alternative to list(), you may use array_shift()

$foo = array_shift(explode(':', $foo));

Apartment

Answer 3

Yes, it's posible to do using list:

list($foo) = explode(":", $foo);

Beatty

Thanks, that's a nice approach. However, I'd love to see an approach that doesn't require additional methods. Something like explode(":", $foo)[0]; – Cantoris

PHP doesn't support that syntax. You're forced to do what you want to do in 2 lines. – Turkoman

I think PHP doesn't allow ...[0] code unlike Python or Perl. And that's why list was added into language. – Beatty

Answer 4

Just completing @GSto answer, in case it helps:
I often have to deal with strings that can have 0 or more separators (colon in this example).

Here is a one-liner to handle such strings:

$first = stristr($foo,":") ? stristr($foo,":",true) : $foo;

Richma