PHP Substring Example

Extract part of a string with substr(). Edit the code below and press Run to execute it with real PHP in your browser.

Code Editor

<?php
$text = "Hello, World!";

echo "Full: $text\n";
echo "First 5: " . substr($text, 0, 5) . "\n";
echo "Last 6: " . substr($text, -6) . "\n";
echo "Middle: " . substr($text, 7, 5) . "\n";
echo "Before comma: " . strstr($text, ",", true);

Output

Full: Hello, World!
First 5: Hello
Last 6: World!
Middle: World
Before comma: Hello

How this substring example works

substr() takes a start offset and an optional length; negative offsets count from the end. strstr($s, $needle, true) returns everything before the first occurrence of the needle.