Remove any comma before or after a string?

Question

My string is

$string = ",name2,name2,name3,";

I want to make it like;

$string = "name2,name2,name3";

That is, to remove first and last comma from that string, any clue as to how to accomplish this either through regex or anything else?

Thanks.

Answer 1

If you just want to remove the first and the last comma, you can use trim

$string = trim($string,",");

Answer 2

You can use anchors for this:

$result = preg_replace('/^,|,$/', '', $subject);

If you want to match one or more commas at the start/end of the string:

$result = preg_replace('/^,+|,+$/', '', $subject);

And if there could be whitespace around those leading/trailing commas:

$result = preg_replace('/^[,\s]+|[\s,]+$/', '', $subject);