note 57517 added to function.substr

I'm doing a little Guestbook for my site, and I want that the php code read the message text word by word, to control their lenght. But, I have first to control that the following word is not a piece of html code, so I write this control: $stringa = '<a href="http://www.google.com>Ciao dall'Italia!</a>'; $code = substr($stringa, 0, 1); if ($code == "<"){ $a = strpos($stringa, ">"); $elab = substr($stringa, 0, $a+1); $stringa = substr($stringa, $a+1);} ... ... ... My problem is that when it does this control for the first time, $code takes the value of h, because substr begin from "http://" not from "<a... ". How can I explain this? Thank you for your attenction and sorry for my maccheroni/English... ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.substr.php Edit -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=edit+57517 Delete: added to the manual -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+57517&report=yes&reason=added+to+the+manual Delete: bad code -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+57517&report=yes&reason=bad+code Delete: spam -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+57517&report=yes&reason=spam Delete: useless -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+57517&report=yes&reason=useless Delete: non-english -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+57517&report=yes&reason=non-english Delete: already in docs -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+57517&report=yes&reason=already+in+docs Delete: other reasons -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+57517&report=yes Reject -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=reject+57517&report=yes Search -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php