Here’s a snippet that extracts elements from an array starting with a specific letter (alphabetical search).

$programming_languages = array('A+', 'A++', 'A# .NET', 'A# (Axiom)', 'A-0', 'B', 'Baja', 'BeanShell', 'C#', 'Cayenne', 'JavaScript', 'Java', 'JScript', 'Python', 'Perl', 'PHP', 'Visual Basic .NET', 'Visual FoxPro', 'ZOPL', 'ZPL');

function alpha_search($array, $letter = 'a') // 'a' is the default value
{
return array_filter($array, create_function('$var', 'return (strtolower(trim($var{0})) == strtolower("'.$letter.'"));'));
}

/* Values starting with 'A' */
echo '<pre>'; print_r(alpha_search($programming_languages, 'a'));  echo '</pre>'; 

/* Values starting with 'V' */
echo '<pre>'; print_r(alpha_search($programming_languages, 'v'));  echo '</pre>';

NOTE: In the second argument you can use either a lower case letter or an upper case letter. It’s case insensitive.

Here’s how our sample ouput will look like:

Array
(
    [0] => A+
    [1] => A++
    [2] => A# .NET
    [3] => A# (Axiom)
    [4] => A-0
)

Array
(
    [16] => Visual Basic .NET
    [17] => Visual FoxPro
)

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