How do i get the first character of a string in php?

I need to get the first character of the given string. here i have a name in the session variable. i am passing the variable value to the substr to get the first character of the string. but i couldn't.

i want to get the first character of that string.

for example John doe. i want to get the first character of the string j. how can i get it using php?

asked Nov 24, 2015 at 10:11

4

For the single-byte encoded (binary) strings:

substr($username, 0, 1);
// or 
$username[0] ?? null;

For the multi-byte encoded strings, such as UTF-8:

mb_substr($username, 0, 1);

answered Nov 24, 2015 at 10:14

1

Three Solutions Sorted by Robustness

1. mb_substr

It takes into consideration text encoding. Example:

$first_character = mb_substr($str, 0, 1)

2. substr

Example:

$first_character = substr($str, 0, 1);

3. Using brackets ([])

Avoid as it throws a notice in PHP 7.x and a warning in PHP 8.x if the string is empty. Example:

$first_character = $str[0];

answered Sep 30, 2021 at 3:34

Nabil KadimiNabil Kadimi

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1

Strings can be seen as Char Arrays, and the way to access a position of an array is to use the [] operator, so there's no problem at all in using $str[0] (and I'm pretty sure is much faster than the substr method).

$fstchar = $username[0];

faster than all method

answered Nov 24, 2015 at 10:19

Parth ChavdaParth Chavda

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Strings in PHP are array like, so simply

$username[0]

mega6382

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answered Nov 24, 2015 at 10:14

Szymon DSzymon D

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I do not have too much experience in php, but this may help you: substr

Nabil Kadimi

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answered Nov 24, 2015 at 11:47

Vitor FerreiraVitor Ferreira

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If the problem is with the Cyrillic alphabet, then you need to use it like this:

mb_substr($username, 0, 1, "UTF-8");

answered Nov 24, 2021 at 7:49

alexsoinalexsoin

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