PHP reference

str_starts_with

Checks whether a string starts with a given substring.

Available since: PHP 8.0

Syntax

str_starts_with(string $haystack, string $needle): bool

Parameter	Type	Description
$haystack	string	The string to check.
$needle	string	The expected beginning of the string.

bool`true` if the string starts with the substring, `false` otherwise.

Checking the protocol of a URL:

<?php
 
var_dump(str_starts_with('https://example.com', 'https://'));
var_dump(str_starts_with('http://example.com', 'https://'));

Output:

bool(true)
bool(false)

The companion str_ends_with() checks the end of a string:

<?php
 
var_dump(str_ends_with('photo.png', '.png'));

Output:

bool(true)

The comparison is case-sensitive. Both functions were added in PHP 8.0; older code compared the result of substr() instead.

Strings — Working with strings in PHP — quotes, concatenation, length, searching, replacing and multibyte functions.