How To Replace Some Characters With Asterisks

Question

I have a simple task to do with PHP, but since I\'m not familiar with Regular Expression or something... I have no clue what I\'m going to do.

what I want is very si

Answer 1

For e-mails, this function preserves first letter:

function hideEmail($email)
{
    $parts = explode('@', $email);
    return substr($parts[0], 0, min(1, strlen($parts[0])-1)) . str_repeat('*', max(1, strlen($parts[0]) - 1)) . '@' . $parts[1];
}

hideEmail('hello@domain.com'); //  h****@domain.com
hideEmail('hi@domain.com');    //  h*@domain.com
hideEmail('h@domain.com');     //  *@domain.com