PHP: change "a" to "an" before vowel [was: How do I code this?]

Question

I have this nice little cookie: . It inserts language names, like Portuguese or French into the text.Mostly, in the text that preceeds the cookie I use the indefinite article, 'a', 'cookie', followed by something like 'newspaper'.The code reads as: a newspaperand it renders as: "...a Portuguese newspaper."But sometimes the nationality starts with a vowel and that messes up the grammar of the phrase, i.e.: "...a Arabic newspaper." ickI want a snippet that will insert an 'n' after the 'a' so it will read: "...an Arabic newspaper."So how do I write that?$A = A;$E=E;$I=I;$O=O;$U=U;(I'm not worried about Yagurkistan) begins with $A OR $E OR $I OR $O OR $U; echo ‘n’; ?>I assume I assign variables to the letters A,E,I,O,U and slip this in after the 'a'. But what is the code for 'begins with'.I'm sure glad you guys and gals are here to help and thank you!Brian[Subject amended by moderator to make it more meaningful]

David_Powers · Accepted Answer

This is very simple to do. All you need to do is inspect the first letter of your variable. If it's a vowel, use "an". If not, use "a".

To get the letter at a particular position in a string, use substr(). To find if a value is in an array, use in_array().

<?php
$vowels = array('A', 'E', 'I', 'O', 'U');
if (in_array(substr($_COOKIE['targ_lang'], 0, 1), $vowels)) {
  echo 'an ';
} else {
  echo 'a ';
}
echo $_COOKIE['targ_lang']; ?>
newspaper

I have given you links to the PHP functions used in this simple script. Please take a few moments to follow the links so that you understand how the script works. The more you learn, the easier it becomes to start writing your own scripts.

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