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LAST UPDATED: AUGUST 4, 2021

How to replace a word inside a string in PHP?

Answer: Using str_replace() function.

We can use str_replace() function to replace some characters or substring within the string. This function replaces all the occurrences of any particular word with the replacement string.

The str_replace() method works based on the following rules given below:

  • If the string which we are searching for is an array, then it returns the array.
  • If the string to be searched is an array, then find and replace is performed with each element within the array.
  • If both find and replace are arrays and replace has fewer elements than find, then an empty string is used as replacement.
  • If the find is an array and replace is a string, then the replacement string will be used for every find value.

Syntax

str_replace(find,replace,string,count)

Example: Using str_replace() function

In this example, we have used the str_replace() function, with the help of which we have replaced the word there with World.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
	<title>string length in PHP</title>
</head>
<body>
	<?PHP
	 $str = 'Hello there';
	 echo str_replace("there", "World", $str);
	?>
</body>
</html>

Output


Hello World

The str_replace() function is case-sensitive, and if we want to find and replace case insensitive string, we have to use the str_ireplace() function.

PHP str_ireplace() function

The str_ireplace() function is also used to replace some characters with some other characters. This function is very much similar to the str_replace() function. There is only one difference between both the functions and that is str_ireplace() function performs a case-insensitive search while the str_replace() method performs the case-sensitive search.

Example: Using str_ireplace() function

In this example, we have used the str_ireplace() method to replace the word st with Studytonight. Here, we have used st instead of ST because the str_ireplace() function can perform a case-insensitive search.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
	<title>Replace a word inside a string</title>
</head>
<body>
	<?php  
		$str = 'Welcome to ST';
		echo str_ireplace("st", "Studytonight", $str);
	?>   
</body>
</html>

Output


Welcome to Studytonight

Conclusion

In this lesson, we have discussed how to replace a word inside a string. To replace a word inside a string, we can use the str_replace() function. This function performs a case-sensitive search and finds and replaces all the occurrences of a word within the string. We can use str_ireplace() function to perform the case-insensitive search.



About the author:
I am the founder of Studytonight. I like writing content about C/C++, DBMS, Java, Docker, general How-tos, Linux, PHP, Java, Go lang, Cloud, and Web development. I have 10 years of diverse experience in software development.