Remove first forward slash in a link?

Question

I need to remove the first forward slash inside link formatted like this:

/directory/link.php

I need to have:

directory/link.php

I'm not literate in regular expressions (preg_replace?) and those slashes are killing me..

I need your help stackoverflow!

Thank you very much!

Answer 1

preg_replace('/^\//', '', $link);

Answer 2

If it's always the first character, you won't need a regex:

$uri = "/directory/link.php";
$uri = substr($uri, 1);

Answer 3

Thank you very much, can you point me to a good learning resource for preg_replace?

best place to get to know preg_replace is of course php documentation I'd suggest checking general preg (pcre) documentation as well.

Answer 4

Just because nobody has mentioned it before:

$uri = "/directory/link.php";
$uri = ltrim($uri, '/');

The benefit of this one is:

• compared to the substr() solution: it works also with paths that do not start with a slash. So using the same procedure multiple times on an uri is safe.

• compared to the preg_replace() solution: it's certainly much more faster. Actuating the regex-engine for such a trivial task is, in my opinion, overkill.