Find first character that is different between two strings

Question

Given two equal-length strings, is there an elegant way to get the offset of the first different character?

The obvious solution would be:

for ($offs         


        

Answer 1

I wanted to add this as as comment to the best answer, but I do not have enough points.

$string1 = 'foobarbaz';
$string2 = 'foobarbiz';
$pos = strspn($string1 ^ $string2, "\0");

if ($pos < min(strlen($string1), strlen($string2)){
    printf(
        'First difference at position %d: "%s" vs "%s"',
        $pos, $string1[$pos], $string2[$pos]
    );
} else if ($pos < strlen($string1)) {
    print 'String1 continues with' . substr($string1, $pos);
} else if ($pos < strlen($string2)) {
    print 'String2 continues with' . substr($string2, $pos);
} else {
    print 'String1 and String2 are equal';
}