How to find the first two and last two character of string without using string function and array function in PHP

Solution:

One option would be to use preg_replace with the regex pattern ([A-Z][a-z])\S+, and then replace with just the captured first two letters.

$str = 'Mukesh Dubey';
$output = preg_replace("/([A-Z][a-z])\S+/", "$1", $str);
echo $str . "\n" . $output;

This prints: Mu Du

Trivially, to cater to retaining any two starting letters, regardless of case, we can try:

$str = 'wolly dolly';
$output = preg_replace("/([A-Za-z]{2})\S+/", "$1", $str);
echo $str . "\n" . $output;