Enter the first character of the word

Enter the first character of the word «Panda» (Note: anything but a valid answer)

Введите первый символ слова «Панда» (Примечание: ничего, кроме действительный ответ)

переводится, пожалуйста, подождите..

Ввести первую букву слова «Panda» (Примечание: ничего, кроме действительного ответа)

переводится, пожалуйста, подождите..

Введите первую букву слова «Панда» (Примечание: не правильный ответ)

переводится, пожалуйста, подождите..

• От тебя
• неделя
• Может тебе такой вариант ответа не нрави
• ядерная война
• What was the name of your best friend as
• я доктор
• Заехай за мной на Кирова 46. А потом реш
• Я постараюсь на этих выходных
• didi madloba
• it means
• Сколько времени Вы работаете в этом мест
• а сколько вам лет?
• introduce
• справа от их дома находится больница
• Я не пью спиртное
• الحقيقة ليست سوى وهم، لكنه وهم ثابت
• Must agree and reach an understanding
• こんにちは。私はロシア人です。
• А я не всегда понимаю
• Группа
• Еще я пишу стихи. Я стану известным поэт
•  Montieren Sie den Antrieb fachgerecht
• Большое спасибо за оперативность и нерав
• It may get close tondisapearing

The best way to accomplish this is with regular expressions.

Lets break down what you want in a logical way: You want every character from the string is at the beginning of a word. The best way to identify those characters is to look for those characters that are preceded by white space.

So we start with a lookbehind for that space character, followed by any character:

/(?<=s)./

This will find any character preceded by a space. But — the first character in the string is a character in the string is one you want extract. And because it’s the first character in the string, it can’t be preceded by a space. So we want to match anything preceded by a space or the first character in the string, so we add a start-of-subject assertion:

/(?<=s|^)./

Now we are getting closer. But what if the string contains blocks of multiple spaces? What if it contains a space followed by a punctuation character? We probably don’t want to match any of those, in fat we probably just want to match letters. We can do that with «any word character» w escape sequence. And we can make are expression case-insensitive using the i modifier as well as u modifier to support utf-8 characters.

So we end up with:

/(?<=s|^)w/iu

But how do we actually use this in PHP? Well we want to match all occurrences of the regular expression within the string so we use (you guessed it) preg_match_all():

$string = "Progress in Veterinary Science";

$expr = '/(?<=s|^)w/iu';
preg_match_all($expr, $string, $matches);

Now we have all the characters we wanted to extract. To construct the result string you show, we need to join them together again:

$result = implode('', $matches[0]);

…and we need to ensure that they are all upper-case:

$result = mb_strtoupper($result);

And that’s really all there is to it.

See it working

Here’s a slightly compressed version, using the alternative regex from Leigh’s comment to «capture the initial letters of words separated by hyphens, full stops, etc.» (rather than only spaces.)

$str="Foo Bar";
preg_match_all('/(?<=b)w/iu',$str,$matches);
$result=mb_strtoupper(implode('',$matches[0]));

As explained by others, classical way consist in iterating over each word of your initial string, reduce the word to its first letter, and combine those first letters together.

Here is a helper method combining the different steps.

/**
 * @return string
 */
function getInitials($string = null) {
    return array_reduce(
        explode(' ', $string),
        function ($initials, $word) {
            return sprintf('%s%s', $initials, substr($word, 0, 1));
        },
        ''
    );
}

NB : this will return an empty string in case the given string is empty.

getInitials('Community College District')

string ‘CCD’ (length=3)

getInitials()

string » (length=0)

getInitials('Lorem ipsum dolor sic amet')

string ‘Lidsa’ (length=5)

Of course you can add filters to the callback function of array_reduce(), such as strtoupper() if you prefer only uppercased initials for instance.

answered Mar 26, 2017 at 11:53

$temp = explode(' ', $string);
$result = '';
foreach($temp as $t)
    $result .= $t[0];

answered Mar 14, 2012 at 16:58

$str = 'I am a String!';
echo implode('', array_map(function($v) { return $v[0]; }, explode(' ', $str)));

// would output IaaS

answered May 28, 2013 at 11:38

Something I’ve cooked up.

/**
 * Return the first letter of each word in uppercase - if it's too long.
 *
 * @param string $str
 * @param int $max
 * @param string $acronym
 * @return string
 */
function str_acronym($str, $max = 12, $acronym = '')
{
    if (strlen($str) <= $max) return $str;

    $words = explode(' ', $str);

    foreach ($words as $word)
    {
        $acronym .= strtoupper(substr($word, 0, 1));
    }

    return $acronym;
}

answered Oct 12, 2015 at 11:41

function acronym( $string = '' ) {
    $words = explode(' ', $string);
    if ( ! $words ) {
        return false;
    }
    $result = '';
    foreach ( $words as $word ) $result .= $word[0];
    return strtoupper( $result );
}

answered Mar 14, 2012 at 17:06

Why not using the str_word_count function for this?

1. get each word as a row in an array

2. reduce that array to the first letter

   $acronym = array_reduce(
   str_word_count(«Community College District», 1),
   function($res , $w){
   return $res . $w[0];
   }
   );

answered Mar 1, 2019 at 13:39

Assuming that the original string is properly built (trimmed and without double spaces), this is what I do:

$name = 'John Doe';
$initials = implode( '', array_map( function ( $part ) { 
    return strtoupper( $part['0'] );
}, explode( ' ', $name ) ) );

Basically, breaking the string into words, extracting & capitalizing the first character of a word, and gluing them back together.

answered Feb 2, 2021 at 15:55

I think you have to explode and join them back again …..

<?php
$string  = "Progress in Veterinary Science";
$pieces = explode(" ", $string);
$str="";
foreach($pieces as $piece)
{
    $str.=$piece[0];
}    
echo $str; /// it will result into  "PiVS"
?>

answered Apr 23, 2013 at 8:37

If there are more number of spaces between two letters in the input string then try this.

function first_letter($str)
{
    $arr2 = array_filter(array_map('trim',explode(' ', $str)));
    $result='';
    foreach($arr2 as $v)
    {
        $result.=$v[0];
    }
    return $result;
}

$str="    Let's   try   with    more   spaces       for  fun .   ";

echo first_letter($str);

Demo1

Alternative of same code

function first_letter($str)
{
    return implode('', array_map(function($v) { return $v[0]; },array_filter(array_map('trim',explode(' ', $str)))));;
}

$str="    Let's   try   with    more   spaces       for  fun .   ";

echo first_letter($str);

Demo2

answered Feb 26, 2016 at 12:43

Try this-

$strs=explode(" ",$string);

foreach($strs as $str)
  echo $str[0];

answered Apr 23, 2013 at 8:34

Something like this should do the trick :

$string = 'Some words in a string';
$words = explode(' ', $string); // array of word
foreach($words as $word){
    echo $word[0]; // first letter
}

answered Apr 23, 2013 at 8:37

<?php $arr = explode(" ",$String);

foreach($arr as $s)
{
   echo substr($s,0,1);
}

?>

firstly I explode string by spaces then I substr first char.

http://php.net/substr

http://php.net/explode

I like Reg Expression over any other method of string extraction, but if you are unfamiliar with Reg Ex then hear is a method using the explode() PHP function:

$string = "David Beckham";
$string_split = explode(" ", $string);
$inititals = $string_split[0][0] . $string_split[1][0];
echo $inititals;

Obviously the above code will only work on a name containing two words.

answered Jan 6, 2016 at 9:38

This answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/33080232/1046909 but with multibyte strings support:

if (!function_exists('str_acronym')) {
    function str_acronym(string $str, int $min = -1, string $prefix = null): string
    {
        if (mb_strlen($str) <= $min) {
            return $str;
        };

        $words = explode(' ', $str);

        $acronym = strval($prefix);

        foreach ($words as $word) {
            if ($word = trim($word)) {
                $acronym .= mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($word, 0, 1));
            }
        }

        return $acronym;
    }
}

answered Aug 19, 2019 at 15:34

You can use that function based on the accepted answer from @Michael Berkowski

function buildAcronym($string, $length = 1) {
    $words = explode(" ", $string);
    $acronym = "";
    $length = (self::is_empty($string) || $length <= 0 ? 1 : $length);

    foreach ($words as $i => $w) {
        $i += 1;
        if($i <= $length) {
            $acronym .= $w[0];
        }
    }

    return $acronym;
}

The $length parameter determines how many chars you want to display

USAGE:

$acronym = buildAcronym("Hello World", 2);

answered May 11, 2020 at 20:33

I’m a little underwhelmed by the suggested techniques here (despite having so many to choose from).

Assuming your input string is solely composed of whitespace delimited «words» (and you don’t need to validate that the first character of each word is an actual letter), you can use this concise, multibyte safe technique to trim all letters after the first letter from each word and also discard the delimiting whitespaces.

Code: (Demo)

$string = "Let's observe obviously knowledgeable approaches that target helpful items succinctly";

echo preg_replace('~SKS*s*~u', '', $string);

Output:

Lookatthis

If you want to specifically target «letters», you can use p{Ll} and non-letters with P{Ll} (as replacements for S and s. The K restarts the fullstring match — by effect, the matched first matched letter of each word is «set free» before matching more characters to be replaced by the empty string.

I see some other approaches on this page that are using lookbehinds to match the first letter of each word with preg_match_all('~(?<=s|b)pL~u', ...), but notice the effect on fringe cases:

$string = "Let's check some fringe-cases: like @mentions and email@example";
#matches:  ^   ^ ^     ^    ^      ^      ^     ^        ^   ^     ^

I cannot say if these would be desirable results, but if they were, then the pattern could be distilled to ~bpL~u because the word boundary (b) is a zero-length assertion that doesn’t require a lookbehind AND it covers every character that s could match.

I should also mention that any of the answers on this page that are accessing the first character by its offset (using array-like syntax like $word[0]) or substr() will fail whenever a multibyte character is encountered.

answered Apr 1, 2022 at 23:35

#include<bits/stdc++.h>

using namespace std;

string firstLetterWord(string str)

{

    string result = "";

    bool v = true;

    for (int i=0; i<str.length(); i++)

    {

        if (str[i] == ' ')

            v = true;

        else if (str[i] != ' ' && v == true)

        {

            result.push_back(str[i]);

            v = false;

        }

    }

    return result;

}

int main()

{

    string str = "geeks for geeks";

    cout << firstLetterWord(str);

    return 0;

}

class GFG

{

    static String firstLetterWord(String str)

    {

        String result = "";

        boolean v = true;

        for (int i = 0; i < str.length(); i++)

        {

            if (str.charAt(i) == ' ')

            {

                v = true;

            }

            else if (str.charAt(i) != ' ' && v == true)

            {

                result += (str.charAt(i));

                v = false;

            }

        }

        return result;

    }

    public static void main(String[] args)

    {

        String str = "geeks for geeks";

        System.out.println(firstLetterWord(str));

    }

}

def firstLetterWord(str):

    result = ""

    v = True

    for i in range(len(str)):

        if (str[i] == ' '):

            v = True

        elif (str[i] != ' ' and v == True):

            result += (str[i])

            v = False

    return result

if __name__ == "__main__":

    str = "geeks for geeks"

    print(firstLetterWord(str))

using System;

class GFG

{

    static String firstLetterWord(String str)

    {

        String result = "";

        bool v = true;

        for (int i = 0; i < str.Length; i++)

        {

            if (str[i] == ' ')

            {

                v = true;

            }

            else if (str[i] != ' ' && v == true)

            {

                result += (str[i]);

                v = false;

            }

        }

        return result;

    }

    public static void Main()

    {

        String str = "geeks for geeks";

        Console.WriteLine(firstLetterWord(str));

    }

}

<script>

    function firstLetterWord(str)

    {

        let result = "";

        let v = true;

        for (let i = 0; i < str.length; i++)

        {

            if (str[i] == ' ')

            {

                v = true;

            }

            else if (str[i] != ' ' && v == true)

            {

                result += (str[i]);

                v = false;

            }

        }

        return result;

    }

    let str = "geeks for geeks";

      document.write(firstLetterWord(str));

</script>

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

void get(string s)

{

    string str = "", temp = "";

    for (int i = s.length() - 1; i > 0; i--) {

        if (isalpha(s[i]) && s[i - 1] == ' ') {

            temp += s[i];

        }

    }

    str += s[0];

    for (int i = temp.length() - 1; i >= 0; i--) {

        str += temp[i];

    }

    cout << str << endl;

}

int main()

{

    string str = "geeks for geeks";

    string str2 = "Code of the    Day";

    get(str);

    get(str2);

    return 0;

}

public class GFG {

    public static void get(String s)

    {

        String str = "", temp = "";

        for (int i = s.length() - 1; i > 0; i--) {

            if (Character.isLetter(s.charAt(i))

                && s.charAt(i - 1) == ' ') {

                temp

                    += s.charAt(i);

            }

        }

        str += s.charAt(0);

        for (int i = temp.length() - 1; i >= 0; i--) {

            str += temp.charAt(i);

        }

        System.out.println(str);

    }

    public static void main(String[] args)

    {

        String str = "geeks for geeks";

        String str2 = "Code of the    Day";

        get(str);

        get(str2);

    }

}

def get(s):

    str = ""

    temp = ""

    for i in range(len(s)-1, 0, -1):

        if s[i].isalpha() and s[i-1] == ' ':

            temp += s[i]

    str += s[0]

    for i in range(len(temp)-1, -1, -1):

        str += temp[i]

    print(str)

str = "geeks for geeks"

str2 = "Code of the    Day"

get(str)

get(str2)

function get(s) {

  let str = "", temp = "";

  for (let i = s.length - 1; i > 0; i--) {

    if (s[i].match(/[a-zA-Z]/) && s[i - 1] === ' ') {

      temp += s[i];

    }

  }

  str += s[0];

  for (let i = temp.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {

    str += temp[i];

  }

  console.log(str);

}

const str = "geeks for geeks";

const str2 = "Code of the    Day";

get(str);

get(str2);

#include <bits/stdc++.h>

using namespace std;

string processWords(char *input)

{

    char *p;

    vector<string> s;

    p = strtok(input, " ");

    while (p != NULL)

    {

        s.push_back(p);

        p = strtok(NULL, " ");

    }

    string charBuffer;

    for (string values : s)

        charBuffer += values[0];

    return charBuffer;

}

int main()

{

    char input[] = "geeks for geeks";

    cout << processWords(input);

    return 0;

}

class GFG

{

   private static StringBuilder charBuffer = new StringBuilder();

   public static String processWords(String input)

   {

        String s[] = input.split("(\s)+");

        for(String values : s)

        {

            charBuffer.append(values.charAt(0));

        }

      return charBuffer.toString();

   }

   public static void main (String[] args)

   {

      String input = "geeks for geeks";

      System.out.println(processWords(input));

   }

}

charBuffer = []

def processWords(input):

    s = input.split(" ")

    for values in s:

        charBuffer.append(values[0])

    return charBuffer

if __name__ == '__main__':

    input = "geeks for geeks"

    print(*processWords(input), sep = "")

using System;

using System.Text;

class GFG

{

private static StringBuilder charBuffer = new StringBuilder();

public static String processWords(String input)

{

        String []s = input.Split(' ');

        foreach(String values in s)

        {

            charBuffer.Append(values[0]);

        }

    return charBuffer.ToString();

}

public static void Main()

{

    String input = "geeks for geeks";

    Console.WriteLine(processWords(input));

}

}

<script>

var charBuffer = "";

function processWords(input)

{

        var s = input.split(' ');

        s.forEach(element => {

            charBuffer+=element[0];

        });

    return charBuffer;

}

var input = "geeks for geeks";

document.write( processWords(input));

</script>