If you know the position of a substring in a given STRING, you can take the substring out by the substr() function. Here is a PHP script on how to USE substr():
<?php
$string = "beginning";
print("Position counted from LEFT: ".substr($string,0,5)."\n");
print("Position counted form right: ".substr($string,-7,3)."\n");
?>
This script will print:
Position counted from left: begin
Position counted form right: GIN
substr() can take negative starting position counted from the END of the string.

If you know the position of a substring in a given string, you can take the substring out by the substr() function. Here is a PHP script on how to use substr():
<?php
$string = "beginning";
print("Position counted from left: ".substr($string,0,5)."\n");
print("Position counted form right: ".substr($string,-7,3)."\n");
?>
This script will print:
Position counted from left: begin
Position counted form right: gin
substr() can take negative starting position counted from the end of the string.