Greetings,

This is a function which will help you to determine if a text starts which a specific string. It’s useful when you’re working with dynamic variables and you need to check if the text matches some patterns like its beginning. For instance you have an array and you want to output only files that have a prefix.

<?php
// Credits: http://www.bitrepository.com/

function begins_with($str, $text)
{
$rest = substr($text, 0, strlen($str));

if($rest == $str)
	{
	return true;
	}
	else
	{
	return false;
	}
}

/* It could be a dynamic variable. Some names, locations, phone numbers etc.
have a prefix and this function can check it. */

$text = '05670-123456789'; // a sample phone number

$begin_str = '05670';

$check = begins_with($begin_str, $text);

if($check)
{
	echo '"'.$text.'"'.' begins with "'.$begin_str.'"';
}
?>

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