(PHP 4, PHP 5)
strspn — Finds the length of the initial segment of a string consisting entirely of characters contained within a given mask.
$subject
   , string $mask
   [, int $start
   [, int $length
  ]] )
   Finds the length of the initial segment of subject
   that contains only characters from mask.
  
   If start and length
   are omitted, then all of subject will be
   examined. If they are included, then the effect will be the same as
   calling strspn(substr($subject, $start, $length),
   $mask) (see substr
   for more information).
  
The line of code:
<?php
$var = strspn("42 is the answer to the 128th question.", "1234567890");
?>
subject that consists only of characters
   contained within "1234567890".
  
 
subjectThe string to examine.
maskThe list of allowable characters.
start
       The position in subject to
       start searching.
      
       If start is given and is non-negative,
       then strspn() will begin
       examining subject at
       the start'th position. For instance, in
       the string 'abcdef', the character at
       position 0 is 'a', the
       character at position 2 is
       'c', and so forth.
      
       If start is given and is negative,
       then strspn() will begin
       examining subject at
       the start'th position from the end
       of subject.
      
length
       The length of the segment from subject
       to examine. 
      
       If length is given and is non-negative,
       then subject will be examined
       for length characters after the starting
       position.
      
        If length is given and is negative,
        then subject will be examined from the
        starting position up to length
        characters from the end of subject.
      
   Returns the length of the initial segment of subject
   which consists entirely of characters in mask.
  
Note:
When a
startparameter is set, the returned length is counted starting from this position, not from the beginning ofsubject.
Example #1 strspn() example
<?php
// subject does not start with any characters from mask
var_dump(strspn("foo", "o"));
// examine two characters from subject starting at offset 1
var_dump(strspn("foo", "o", 1, 2));
// examine one character from subject starting at offset 1
var_dump(strspn("foo", "o", 1, 1));
?>
The above example will output:
int(0) int(2) int(1)
Note: This function is binary-safe.