Remove a string from the beginning of a string

I have a string that looks like this:

$str = "bla_string_bla_bla_bla";

How can I remove the first bla_; but only if it's found at the beginning of the string?

With str_replace(), it removes all bla_'s.

Plain form, without regex:

$prefix = 'bla_';
$str = 'bla_string_bla_bla_bla';

if (substr($str, 0, strlen($prefix)) == $prefix) {
    $str = substr($str, strlen($prefix));
} 

Takes: 0.0369 ms (0.000,036,954 seconds)

And with:

$prefix = 'bla_';
$str = 'bla_string_bla_bla_bla';
$str = preg_replace('/^' . preg_quote($prefix, '/') . '/', '', $str);

Takes: 0.1749 ms (0.000,174,999 seconds) the 1st run (compiling), and 0.0510 ms (0.000,051,021 seconds) after.

Profiled on my server, obviously.

You can use regular expressions with the caret symbol (^) which anchors the match to the beginning of the string:

$str = preg_replace('/^bla_/', '', $str);

function remove_prefix($text, $prefix) {
	if(0 === strpos($text, $prefix))
		$text = substr($text, strlen($prefix)).'';
	return $text;
}

Here's an even faster approach:

// strpos is faster than an unnecessary substr() and is built just for that 
if (strpos($str, $prefix) === 0) $str = substr($str, strlen($prefix));

Here.

$array = explode("_", $string);
if($array[0] == "bla") array_shift($array);
$string = implode("_", $array);

> Nice speed, but this is hard-coded to depend on the needle ending with _. Is there a general version? – toddmo Jun 29 at 23:26

A general version:

$parts = explode($start, $full, 2);
if ($parts[0] === '') {
    $end = $parts[1];
} else {
    $fail = true;
}

Some benchmarks:

<?php

$iters = 100000;
$start = "/aaaaaaa/bbbbbbbbbb";
$full = "/aaaaaaa/bbbbbbbbbb/cccccccccc/dddddddddd/eeeeeeeeee";
$end = '';

$fail = false;

$t0 = microtime(true);
for ($i = 0; $i < $iters; $i++) {
    if (strpos($full, $start) === 0) {
        $end = substr($full, strlen($start));
    } else {
        $fail = true;
    }
}
$t = microtime(true) - $t0;
printf("%16s : %f s\n", "strpos+strlen", $t);

$t0 = microtime(true);
for ($i = 0; $i < $iters; $i++) {
    $parts = explode($start, $full, 2);
    if ($parts[0] === '') {
        $end = $parts[1];
    } else {
        $fail = true;
    }
}
$t = microtime(true) - $t0;
printf("%16s : %f s\n", "explode", $t);

On my quite old home PC:

$ php bench.php

Outputs:

   strpos+strlen : 0.158388 s
         explode : 0.126772 s

I think substr_replace does what you want, where you can limit your replace to part of your string: http://nl3.php.net/manual/en/function.substr-replace.php (This will enable you to only look at the beginning of the string.)

You could use the count parameter of str_replace ( http://nl3.php.net/manual/en/function.str-replace.php ), this will allow you to limit the number of replacements, starting from the left, but it will not enforce it to be at the beginning.