search for string within a string using positions

[nil111]

say i have a string like the following:

aaa999bbb

how can i extract just 999 here?

tried many fucntions but still no luck.thanks in advance!

[nil111]

oh by the way the length of the numeric part changes. so it can be 1 to n

[nil111]

sorry for postin again. to mk things easier i'v made the string as follows.

abc999dfg

so i want to know how can i get the string in between the character 'c' and 'd'.

thanks!

[nil111]

made this ma self. in case anyone needs here it is:

<?php
$string ="a99b";

$start = strpos($string, "a");
$end = strpos($string, "b");
$length = strlen($string);

print "the start is ".$start." end is ".$end." the total length".$length."<br />";

$substr1 = substr($string, $start+1, $length);
print $substr1."<br />";

$new_length = strlen($substr1);
$num = $new_length-1;
//new length is 3

$substr2 = substr($substr1, -$new_length, $num);

print $substr2;
?>

[rocknbil]

Glad you got it sorted, but let me ask: are you after only the numeric part of this string?

$string = 'aaa12345vvvv';
$string = preg_replace('/[^\d]+/','',$string);
echo $string;

Basically this regexp says "replace one or more characters not (^) a digit with nothing."

This many have an unexpected result if the strings are not in the format you posted,

$string = 'aaa12345vv6789vv';

will result in

123456789

[nil111]

in my case i jst want 12345. so thats why i basically tried to get the values between aaa and vv(in ur example). thanks for the post