PHP Regular Expression Exercises: Remove the last word from a string

Last update on May 31 2025 12:56:46 (UTC/GMT +8 hours)

2. Remove the last word from a string

Write a PHP script that removes the last word from a string.

Sample string : 'The quick brown fox'

Visual Presentation:

PHP Regular Expression Exercise: Remove the last word from a string

Sample Solution:

PHP Code:

<?php
// Define the input string
$str1 = 'The quick brown fox';

// Use preg_replace function to remove the last word along with its trailing spaces
echo preg_replace('/\W\w+\s*(\W*)$/', '$1', $str1)."\n";
?>

Output:

The quick brown

Explanation:

In the exercise above,

'$str1' variable stores the input string: 'The quick brown fox'.
The "preg_replace()" function performs regular expression-based string replacement.
The regular expression pattern /\W\w+\s*(\W*)$/ is applied to the input string:

\W: Matches any non-word character (e.g., punctuation).
\w+: Matches one or more word characters.
\s*: Matches zero or more whitespace characters.
(\W*)$: Captures zero or more non-word characters at the end of the string.

The replacement string '$1' is used to replace the matched pattern with the captured group '$1', which represents the trailing non-word characters.
The modified string is then echoed.

Flowchart :

For more Practice: Solve these Related Problems:

Write a PHP script to remove the last *n* words from a string and return the shortened version.
Write a PHP function to remove the last word from a string only if it ends with a punctuation mark.
Write a PHP script to remove the last word from a string and return it separately along with the trimmed string.
Write a PHP function to remove the last word from a string while preserving leading/trailing whitespace and punctuation.

Go to:

PREV : Check if a string contains another string.
NEXT : Remove whitespaces from a string.

PHP Code Editor:

Have another way to solve this solution? Contribute your code (and comments) through Disqus.