Extracting numeric from string [WAS: Re: php4 vs. php5]

At 04:52 PM 2/2/2006, Keith Proctor wrote:

I need to add two numbers together, unfortunately one of them is a string that starts with a character. I'd like to convert a string such as 'x5' to the number 5.

Keith, You could chop characters off the front until you've got a numeric:

        while (!is_numeric($sString) && $sString > "")
        {
                $sString = substr($sString, 1);
        }

or you could delete all non-numeric characters wherever they appear:

        $sString = preg_replace("/[^\d\.\-]/", "", $sString);

Paul