How to remove a part of the string at the beginning or after the space?

Question

I need to exchange names started with HE for E as for example

HELIANE HELIAS

for

ELIANE ELIAS

but it may be

WILLIAM HENRY

and switch to

GUILHERME ENRIQUE

Answer 1

If it’s just to replace the HE at the beginning of names/words use the \b, so no middle characters are replaced in the string.

Example - ideone

<?php
   //exemplo 1
   $str = 'HELIANE HELIAS';
   $str = preg_replace('/\bHE/','E', $str);
   echo $str. PHP_EOL; //ELAINE ELIAS

   //exemplo 2
   $str = 'GHELIANE GHELIAS';
   $str = preg_replace('/\bHE/','E', $str);
   echo $str; //GHELIANE GHELIAS

Related:

What’s the use of a Boundary ( b) in a regular expression?

Answer 2

You can do it using the preg_replace, created an example function:

function removeHe($nome) {
    $pattern = '/[^a-zA-Z ]{1}H(e)/i';
    $replace = '$1';
    return ucwords(preg_replace($pattern, $replace, $nome));
}

Or if you prefer, a reduced version of the function:

function removeHe($nome) {
    return ucwords(preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z ]{1}H(e)/i', '$1', $nome));
}

Use:

echo removeHe('Guilherme Henrique');
echo '<br/>';
echo removeHe('HELIANE HELIAS') ;
echo '<br/>';
echo removeHe('Heliane Helias') ; // iniciando com he
echo '<br/>';
echo removeHe('Marcos Porche') ; // terminado com he

Return:

Guilherme Henrique

HELIANE HELIAS

Heliane Helias

Marcos Porche

I hope I’ve helped!