Function and String
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Function
A function is a block of statements that can be used repeatedly in a program.
There are two types of function
Built in function / Predefined function
User defined function
PHP has 1000+ built-in functions that can be called directly, from within a script, to
perform a specific task.
Examples :
ord(character) : To get ASCII value of specified character
chr(value) : To get character for specified value
array() : To define array
date() : To get current date
time() : To get current time
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User defined function
Besides the built-in PHP functions, it is possible to create our own functions.
A function will be executed by a call to the function.
Two steps to write user defined function:
Function definition
Function call
A user-defined function declaration starts with the word function
Syntax: function functionName([parameters])
{
Statements;
}
A function name must start with a letter or an underscore.
Function names are NOT case-sensitive.
Syntax for function call is functionName([parameters]);
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Types of functions
Non parameterized function : Function without parameters are called as Non
parameterized function.
Example:
<?php
function display()
{
echo “Hello World!!!”;
}
display();
?>
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Types of functions
Parameterized function: Function with the parameters are called as
parameterized function.
Example:
<?php
function display($s)
{
echo $s;
}
display(“PHP Programming”);
display(“JAVA Programming”);
?>
Prepared By Deepali Sonawane, DoCSA, MIT-WPU
Types of functions
Parameterized function with two parameters:
Example:
<?php
function display($nm,$rn)
{
echo “Roll Number of $nm is $rn”;
}
display(“Akash”,20);
?>
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Types of Parameters
There are two types of parameters in PHP
1. Actual Parameters : These parameters are used in function call, that contains actual value of
variables.
Example : addition($a,$b)
2. Formal or Dummy Parameters : These parameters are used in function definition. Example :
function addition($c,$d)
Example:
<?php
function addition($c,$d)
{
echo “Addition is ”, $c+$d;
}
$a=10, $b=20;
addition($a,$b);
?>
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Default parameters
In the parameterized function we can set default value to the parameter.
Specify default values from right to left.
Example:
<?php
function addition($a=1,$b=1)
{
$c = $a+$b;
echo “Addition is ”, $c;
}
addition(10,20);//30
addition(10);//11
addition();//2
?>
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Function with returning value
return statement is used to return value from the function.
Example:
<?php
function addition($a,$b)
{
$c = $a+$b;
return $c;
}
$d = addition(10,20);
echo “<br>Addition is ” , $d;
echo “<br>Addition is ”, addition(37,89);
?>
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Methods of passing parameters to function
There are two methods to pass parameters to function :
1. Call by Value : In call by value method, actual values are passed to the function and
that are modified inside the function but not outside the function.
2. Call by reference :In call by reference method, actual values are modified if they are
modified inside the function. In such case, we use & (ampersand) symbol with formal
arguments. The & represents reference of the variable.
Example : function swap(&$a , &$b)
{
$t = $a;
$a = $b;
$b = $t;
}
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Variable Function
If name of a variable has parentheses (with or without parameters in it) in front of
it, PHP parser tries to find a function whose name corresponds to value of the
variable and executes it. Such a function is called variable function.
This allows for dynamic function calls at runtime.
Example: <?php $var=“display";
function display(){
$var();
echo “I am in display function";
$var=“show”;
}
$var(“I am in show function”);
function show($s){
echo “<br>$s”; ?>
}
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Anonymous Function
An anonymous function is a function that doesn’t have any name specified at
the time of definition.
Syntax : $var=function ($arg1, $arg2) { return $val; };
Note that there is no function name between the function keyword and the
opening parenthesis, and the fact that there is a semicolon after the function
definition.
This implies that anonymous function definitions are expressions.
When assigned to a variable, the anonymous function can be called later using the
variables name.
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Example for Anonymous Function
Example 1:
<?php
$add = function ($a, $b) { return “Addition is: " . $a+$b; };
echo $add(5,10);
?>
Example 2:
<?php
$add = function ($a, $b) {
return “Addition is: " . $a+$b;
};
echo $add(5,10);
?>
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Recursive Function
Recursive Function : It is a function which calls itself.
Recursion : It is a process in which function calls itself from its body.
Advantages of recursive function:
i. Reduce unnecessary calling of function.
ii. Through Recursion one can Solve problems in easy way while its iterative solution is very big
and complex.
iii. Recursion uses stack to store data so that we get previous value of a variable.
Disadvantages of recursive function:
i. Recursive solution is always logical and it is very difficult to trace.(debug and understand).
ii. In recursive function we must have an if statement somewhere to force the function to return
value.
iii. Recursion uses more processor time.
iv. Recursion takes a lot of stack space, usually not considerable when the program is small.
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Example of Recursive Function
Example:
<?php
function factorial($n)
{
if ($n>=1)
return $n*factorial($n-1);
else
return 1;
}
echo “<br>Factorial is ”, factorial(5);
?>
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Creating and Accessing Strings
String is a sequence of characters or array of Characters.
Example: $str = “PHP”;
Code to display string :
<?php
$str = “PHP Programming”;
for($i =0; $i<strlen($str);$i++)
{
echo “<br>”, $str[$i];
}
?>
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Formatting Strings
Like many other languages, PHP features the printf() function that we can use to
format strings in many different ways. These functions are handy when we need
convert data between different formats.
Example :
<?php
$name = “Ashish”;
$rno=10;
printf(“Roll number of %s is %d” , $name , $rno);
?>
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List of format specifier
%b: Format the argument as a binary integer. (e.g. 10010110)
%c: Format the argument as a character with the argument’s ASCII value
%d: Format the argument as a signed decimal integer
%e : Format the argument in scientific notation (e.g. 1.234e+3)
%f : Format the argument as a floating-point number
%o : Format the argument as an octal integer
%s : Format the argument as a string
%u : Format the argument as an unsigned decimal integer
%x : Format the argument as a lowercase hexadecimal integer (e.g. 4fdf87)
%X : Format the argument as an uppercase hexadecimal integer (e.g. 4FDF87)
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Regular Expression and Pattern matching
A regular expression is a sequence of characters that forms a search pattern. When you
search for data in a text, you can use this search pattern to describe what you are searching
for.
Regular expressions can be used to perform all types of text search and text replace
operations.
In PHP, regular expressions are strings composed of delimiters, a pattern and optional
modifiers.
Example : $exp = "/Kothrud/i";
In the example above, / is the delimiter, Kothrud is the pattern that is being searched
for, and i is a modifier that makes the search case-insensitive.
The delimiter can be any character that is not a letter, number, backslash or space. The most
common delimiter is the forward slash (/), but when your pattern contains forward
slashes it is convenient to choose other delimiters such as # or ~.
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Regular Expression Functions
preg_match($pattern,$str) : Returns 1 if the pattern was found in the string and 0 if not
preg_match_all ($pattern,$str) : Returns the number of times the pattern was found in the
string, which may also be 0
preg_replace($pattern,$replace,$str) : Returns a new string where matched patterns have
been replaced with another string.
preg_split($pattern, $str[,$limit,$flags]): This function breaks a string into an array using
matches of a regular expression as separators.
where limit is the number of elements that the returned array can have and flags is
PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY : Empty strings will be removed from the returned array.
PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE: If the regular expression contains a group wrapped in
parentheses, matches of this group will be included in the returned array.
PREG_SPLIT_OFFSET_CAPTURE :Each element in the returned array will be an array
with two element, where the first element is the substring and the second element is the
position of the first character of the substring in the input string.
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Regular Expression Functions
Example for preg_match():
<?php
$str = “Good morning";
$pattern = "/Morning/i";
echo preg_match($pattern, $str); // Output: 1
?>
Example for preg_match_all():
<?php
$str = "The rain in SPAIN falls mainly on the plains.";
$pattern = "/ain/i";
echo preg_match_all($pattern, $str); // Output: 4
?>
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Regular Expression Functions
Example for preg_replace():
<?php
$str = “Good morning!";
$pattern = “/morning /i";
echo preg_replace($pattern, “afternoon", $str); // Output: "Good afternoon!“
?>
Example for preg_split():
<?php
$date = “10-08-2025";
$pattern = "/-/";
$components = preg_split($pattern, $date, 3, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
print_r($components);
?>
Prepared By Deepali Sonawane, DoCSA, MIT-WPU
Regular Expression Functions
Example for preg_split():
<?php
$date = “10-08-2025";
$pattern = "/(-)/";
$components = preg_split($pattern, $date, 5, PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
print_r($components);
?>
Example for preg_split():
<?php
$date = "10-08-2025";
$pattern = "/-/";
$components = preg_split($pattern, $date, 3, PREG_SPLIT_OFFSET_CAPTURE );
print_r($components);
?>
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Regular Expression Patterns
Brackets are used to find a range of characters:
[abc] : Find one character from the options between the brackets
[^abc] : Find any character NOT between the brackets
[0-9] : Find one character from the range 0 to 9
Example:
<?php
$str = "The rain in SPAIN falls mainly on the plains.";
$pattern = "/[ah]/i";
echo preg_match_all($pattern, $str); //Output is 7
?>
Prepared By Deepali Sonawane, DoCSA, MIT-WPU
String Functions
1. strlen($str) : It returns the string length.
2. str_word_count($str) : It returns the number of words in a string.
3. strrev($str) : This function reverses a string.
4. strpos($str1,$str2): This function searches for a specific text within a string. If a
match is found, the function returns the character position of the first match. If no
match is found, it will return FALSE.
5. str_replace($search,$replace,$str): This function replaces some characters with
some other characters in a string.
6. ucfirst($str) : converts the first character of a string to uppercase
7. lcfirst($str) : converts the first character of a string to lowercase
8. ucwords($str) : converts the first character of each word in a string to uppercase
Prepared By Deepali Sonawane, DoCSA, MIT-WPU
String Functions
9. trim($str) : Removes whitespace from both sides of a string.
10. ltrim($str): Removes whitespace from the left side of a string.
11. rtrim($str): Removes whitespace from the right side of a string.
12. strcmp($str1, $str2): Compares two strings and return 0 if same, -1 if
$str1<$str2, 1 if $str1>$str2.
13. strtolower($str): converts a string to lowercase
14. strtoupper($str): converts a string to uppercase
15. substr($str,$start[,$length]): Returns a substring of a string.
16. str_repeat($str,$number) : Repeats a string to specified number of times.
17. strstr($str,$search[,$before_search]): Searches for the first occurrence of a string
inside another string and returns rest of the part. Default value for before_search
is false(before_search is true or false)
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String Functions
18. str_split($str[,$length]) : Splits string into an array.
19. join(separator,array) : It returns a string from the elements of an array.
20. ctype_lower($str): Returns true if string is in lowercase else returns false.
21. ctype_upper($str): Returns true if string is in uppercase else returns false.
22. ctype_alpha($str): Returns true if $str is alphabet else returns false.
23. str_pad(string, length, pad_string[,pad_type]) : Attach a string to a new length.
where pad_type = STR_PAD_BOTH, STR_PAD_LEFT, STR_PAD_RIGHT
Default value for pad_type is STR_PAD_RIGHT.
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Thank you
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