Delete first 3 characters and last 3 characters from String PHP

Pass a negative value as the length argument (the 3rd argument) to substr(), like:

$result = substr($string, 3, -3);

So this:

<?php
$string = "Sean Bright";
$string = substr($string, 3, -3);
echo $string;
?>

Outputs:

n Bri

As stated in other answers you can use one of the following functions to reach your goal:

• substr($string, 3, -3) removes 3 chars from start and end
• trim($string, ",") removes all specific chars from start and end
• ltrim($string, ".") removes all specific chars from start
• rtrim($string, ";") removes all specific chars from end

It depends on the amount of chars you need to remove and if the removal needs to be specific. But finally substr() answers your question perfectly.

Maybe someone thinks about removing the first/last char through string dereferencing. Forget that, it will not work as null is a char as well:

<?php
$string = 'Stackoverflow';
var_dump($string);
$string[0] = null;
var_dump($string);
$string[0] = null;
var_dump($string);
echo ord($string[0]) . PHP_EOL;
$string[1] = '';
var_dump($string);
echo ord($string[1]) . PHP_EOL;
?>

returns:

string(13) "Stackoverflow"
string(13) "tackoverflow"
string(13) "tackoverflow"
0
string(13) "ackoverflow"
0

And it is not possible to use unset($string[0]) for strings:

Fatal error: Cannot unset string offsets in /usr/www/***.php on line **

Use

substr($var,1,-1)

this will always get first and last without having to use strlen.

Example:

<?php
    $input = ",a,b,d,e,f,";
    $output = substr($input, 1, -1);
    echo $output;
?>

Output:

a,b,d,e,f