String Manipulation

IN THIS CHAPTER,WE’LL DISCUSS HOW you can use PHP’s string functions to format and
manipulate text.We’ll also discuss using string functions or regular expression functions
to search (and replace) words, phrases, or other patterns within a string.
These functions are useful in many contexts.You’ll often want to clean up or reformat
user input that is going to be stored in a database. Search functions are great when
building search engine applications (among other things).
In this chapter, we will cover
n Formatting strings
n Joining and splitting strings
n Comparing strings
n Matching and replacing substrings with string functions
n Using regular expressions