Using PHP str_ends_with() Function: Syntax, Usage, and Case Sensitivity

In everyday PHP programming, you may need to determine whether a string ends with a specific character or substring. PHP provides the useful str_ends_with() function for this purpose.

Basic Syntax of str_ends_with()

bool str_ends_with(string $haystack, string $needle)

The function accepts two parameters: $haystack, the string to search, and $needle, the substring to match at the end. It returns true if $haystack ends with $needle, otherwise false.

Usage of str_ends_with()

$str1 = "Hello, World!";
$str2 = "This is a test.";
$str3 = "Welcome to PHP.";

var_dump(str_ends_with($str1, "World!"));   // bool(true)
var_dump(str_ends_with($str1, "World"));    // bool(false)
var_dump(str_ends_with($str2, "test."));    // bool(true)
var_dump(str_ends_with($str3, "PHP."));     // bool(false)

These examples show that str_ends_with() accurately determines whether a string ends with the specified substring and returns the corresponding boolean value.

Note that str_ends_with() is case‑sensitive. If the case does not match, the function returns false. To perform a case‑insensitive check, you can convert both strings to lower case using strtolower() before comparison.

Example Using strtolower()

$str = "Hello, World!";
$end = "world!";

var_dump(str_ends_with(strtolower($str), strtolower($end)));   // bool(true)

Besides case sensitivity, str_ends_with() can only check the end of a string; it cannot check the beginning or middle. For those cases, functions like str_starts_with() and strstr() should be used.

Overall, str_ends_with() is a practical PHP function for quickly and accurately checking string endings, provided you are aware of its case‑sensitivity and its limitation to end‑position checks.