Get String Between

Search $string and return what's between $start and $end. It's simple, doesn't use regex, so it's just a useful cleaver to pick up when you need to extract some content but it's not in a structured format (but you know it's the bit that comes between, say: '</head>' and '<div id="footer">' OR between 'Amy says' and 'Do not tell a soul'). You can use this to salvage nodes from an XML file that won't parse, or any number of things.

/**
* Search a string for a substring between $start and $end substrings
*/
function get_string_between($string, $start, $end, $inclusive = FALSE) {
/* for convenience, we make our string start at position #1 */
$string = ' ' . $string;
$string = htmlentities($string);
$start = htmlentities($start);
$end = htmlentities($end);
/* initial point = position of start delimiter */
$ini = strrpos($string, $start);
/* if start not found, return null */
if ($ini == 0) {
return "";
}
/* the actual initial point should just after the start delimiter */
$ini += strlen($start);
/* the length of the string we're seeking
* is distance between the start and end delimiters, minus the start delimiter's length
*/
$len = strrpos($string, $end, $ini) - $ini;
/* if "inclusive" then tack the delims onto the found string */
$ret = substr($string, $ini, $len);
if ($inclusive) {
$ret = $start . $ret . $end;
}
return html_entity_decode($ret);
}

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Get String Between

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