The substr function

The substr function extracts a substring out of a string and returns it. The function receives 3 arguments: a string value, a position on the string (starting to count from 0) and a length.

Example1:
$a = "university";
$k = substr ($a, 3, 5); #get a substring from position 3 (starting from 0) and a lenght of 5 for string $a
$k is now "versi"

$a = "university";
$k = substr ($a, -3, 5); #get a substring from position at right at 3 and a lenght of 5
to the right for string $a

$k is now "ity"
Noticed it only returns 3 letters not 5 because there are only 3 letters when counting from the
right to position 3.

$a remains unchanged.
If length is omitted, everything to the end of the string is returned.

Example (Get information fromm Swiss-Port data entry of Aplysia)
The input file used for this example: swp_apl.txt