strpos

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

&reftitle.description; ``int``false```strpos` `string` `haystack` `string` `needle` `int` `offset` 0

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

&reftitle.parameters;

`haystack`

- The string to search in.

`needle`

- The string to search for.

  &strings.parameter.needle.non-string;

`offset`

- If specified, search will start this number of characters counted from the beginning of the string. If the offset is negative, the search will start this number of characters counted from the end of the string.

&reftitle.returnvalues;

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.

&return.falseproblem;
&reftitle.changelog;

&Version; | &Description;
&strings.changelog.needle-empty;
8.0.0 | Passing an &integer; as `needle` is no longer supported.
7.3.0 | Passing an &integer; as `needle` has been deprecated.
7.1.0 | Support for negative `offset`s has been added.

&reftitle.examples;

### 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";
    }
    ?>

### 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'";
    }
    ?>

### 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
    ?>

&reftitle.notes; ¬e.bin-safe;
&reftitle.seealso;

- `stripos`
- `str_contains`
- `str_ends_with`
- `str_starts_with`
- `strrpos`
- `strripos`
- `strstr`
- `strpbrk`
- `substr`
- `preg_match`