getting first char of a string

[jimberger]

Hello all,

I have a string e,g test

how do i retrieve the first character of that string

for example a function that takes a string test and returns the letter t

Thanks for your help

jimbob

 

[zephan]

The function substring take any part of a string. Its syntax is :

substr(expression, nb_of_char_to_jump, nb_of_char_to_extract);

For example, your string $string="test". you want the 't' do:
$first_letter=substr($string,0,1);

0 : means that you don'nt want to skip any char
1 : means that you need only 1 char

 

[missbarbell]

If you're familiar with regexs you can also try:

$string =~ /^(.{1,1})/;
$letter = $1;

The "{1,1}" specifies only 1 character. If you want 2 or 3 characters you would change it to "{2,3}". This method is quicker than substr.

HTH,
Barbie. Leader of Birmingham Perl Mongers

http://birmingham.pm.org

 

[hmerrill]

You could also do

@char_array = split //, $string_of_text;

$first_char = @char_array[0];

When you split on nothing(//), it splits each character into it's own element of the resulting list. I'm not sure how efficient this is compared to the other methods, but this is an option.

HTH. Hardy Merrill
Mission Critical Linux, Inc.

http://www.missioncriticallinux.com