Online PHP editor | output for qh9Rb

<?php var_dump(firstWordPosition('Will company any do any job, (are there any)?', 'any')); var_dump(firstWordPosition('Will *any* company do *any* job, (are there any)?', 'any')); function firstWordPosition($str, $word) { // There are others, maybe also pass this in or array_merge() for more control. $nonchars = ["'",'"','.',',','!','?','(',')','^','$','#','\n','\r\n','\t',]; // You could also do a strpos() with an if and another argument passed in. // Note that we're padding the $str to with spaces to match begin/end. $pos = stripos(str_replace($nonchars, ' ', " $str "), " $word "); // Have to account for the for-space on " $str ". return $pos ? $pos - 1: false; }