根据数组中的一个前缀将字符串分为两部分

Question

So I have medical licenses that are kept as a string in the db. I need a way to show a license letter(s) (prefix) and number separately.

The array of prefixes is pre-defined:

$license_letters = array('20A', 'A', 'C', 'CNM', 'G', 'NP', 'PA');

And licenses look like 20A345000, C11006, G678999, PA200200, and so on. So I need to be able to get '20A' and '345000' or 'C' and '11006' for any license.

Searching by the first digit will not work because one of the possible prefixes is 20A. I'm pretty sure there must be a simple solution, but I can't think of it. Would appretiate any help.

Answer 1

If it is true that no license string is a part of any other (you don't have both "A" and "AB" in the list), then just loop through and find the first match as follows:

function parts($licenseString) {
    $foreach($license_letters AS $prefix) {
        if(strpos($licenseString, $prefix) === 0) {
            return [$prefix, substr($licenseString, strlen($prefix)];
        }
    }
}

Edit: I meant to use === in the compare. strpos returns 'false' when no match is found, we want a match at position zero, hence we are looking for a return value which is specifically 0 (type number). Thanks for commenters pointing this out.