When using strpos() there is no way to differentiate between a "not found" condition and a return of 0 index. 

According to bug #1234

  [1999-03-14 14:26:35] rasmus

  FALSE is defined as the empty string "" which strpos() will return when a match is not found.  If a match is found in the first position it will return 0.

According to bug #1323

  [1999-04-16 16:03:08] rasmus

  Untrue.  false is "" which is different from a string index of 0.  You just have to check it correctly.


However, the following code snippet demonstrates that there is no straight way to determine the real result of strpos().

----

<?php

echo "Test 1\n";
if (strpos("abcd", "e") == FALSE)
  echo "it should enter here\n";
else
  echo "it should NOT enter here\n";

echo "Test 2\n";
if (strpos("abcd", "a") == FALSE)
  echo "it should NOT enter here\n";
else
  echo "it should enter here\n";

?>

----

The above code, when interpreted with "php -q < snippet", produces the following output:

# php -q < snippet
Test 1
it should enter here
Test 2
it should NOT enter here

----

I've noted that strstr(), since it always returns a string, does not suffer the same problem as above, and it can be used as a temporary workaround in case one just wants to check if the needle is contained in the haystack. The problem has been noted also in previous versions of PHP3.