Try with substr() as simply short

$my_array = array("Alpha", "Aloo", "Amakeaviral", "Boki", "Bone"); foreach($my_array as $v){ echo substr($v, 0, 1); } 

or your code:- remove = from loop <=(else you will get notices) and use [] rather {}

$my_array = array("Alpha", "Aloo", "Amakeaviral", "Boki", "Bone"); for($i=0; $i < count($my_array); $i++){ $first_char = $my_array[$i][0]; echo $first_char; } 

substr

Finding first character

substr("Hello", 0, 1); //output "H" 

Try:

$first_char = substr($my_array[$i], 0, 1); 

Full code:

for($i = 0; $i < count($my_array); $i++){ echo $first_char = substr($my_array[$i], 0, 1); } 

Note: $i <= count($my_array) should be $i < count($my_array)

Live DEMO

Basically, every string is an array and can be accessed like it:

$str = 'This is a string'; echo $str[0]; // Output: T echo $str[1]; // Output: h echo $str[2]; // Output: i 

Just change this:

$first_char = $my_array[$i]{0}; 

into this:

$first_char = $my_array[$i][0]; 

Try this

$my_array = array("Alpha", "Aloo", "Amakeaviral", "Boki", "Bone"); foreach($my_array as $v){ echo $v[0]; } 

I know this is a bit old I'm sorry but this is how I did it with an array of objects. I wanted to display the title of each object in an alphabetised page. I used the following:

$items = array ( [0] => stdClass Object ( [title] => Alpha [name] => Joe Blogs [address] => 123 Harry Street ) [1] => stdClass Object ( [title] => Bravo [name] => Jane Doe [address] => 456 Upton Street ) [2] => stdClass Object ( [title] => Charlie [name] => Jane Doe [address] => 456 Upton Street ) ) 

Then declared this function in a helper class

public static function alphaSortItems ($items) { $sortedItems = array(); foreach ($items as $item) { $sortedItems[$item->title[0]][] = $item; } return $sortedItems; } 

Then to display them I used

 <?php $sortedItems = Helper::alphaSortItems($this->items); ?> <?php foreach ($sortedItems as $key => $value) : ?> <h2><?php echo $key; ?></h2> <?php foreach ($value as $item) : ?> <h3><?php echo $item->title; ?></h3> <?php endforeach; ?> <?php endforeach; ?> 

That's how I did it anyway :-)

Please try this:

$my_array = array("Alpha", "Aloo", "Amakeaviral", "Boki", "Bone"); for($i = 0; $i < count($my_array); $i++){ $first_char = $my_array[$i][0]; echo $first_char; } 

Question is not very clear: I'm not getting if the OP wants the results grouped by initial letter and sorted, or only obtain the first letter.

Extract first letter from every word in the array

Basic concept

As others stated, a string can be seen also as an array of characters. In this case, we need to take the first character only (at index 0):

$word = 'cat'; $initial_letter = $word[0]; // result: 'c' 

Repeat for every item

In order to apply this to every word in the array, we can use array_map(callback, $array) which applies a callback function, to every item in the array.

So:

$my_array = ["Alpha", "Aloo", "Amakeaviral", "Boki", "Bone"]; array_map(fn($word) => $word[0], $my_array); // result: ['A', 'A', 'A', 'B', 'B']; 

If you want to return the first letter in uppercase format:

$my_array = ['alpha', 'omega']; array_map(fn($word) => strtoupper($word[0]), $my_array ); // result: ['A', 'O']; 

Sort words by initial letter

We can sort/divide the words array into groups, by their initial letter.

This is the expected format: [ 'A' => [word1, word2, word3, ...], 'B' => [word1, word2, ...] ]

$my_array = ["Alpha", "Aloo", "Amakeaviral", "Boki", "Bone"]; $grouped_word_list = []; foreach($my_array as $word) { $word_initial = strtoupper($word[0]); $grouped_word_list[$word_initial][] = $word; } 

To sort the result, you can sort the initial array this way:

sort($my_array); // it will modify the original array, don't assign result to a variable 

Why sorting the initial array instead of sorting the final list?

• because sorting an unidimensional array is much easier and fast than sorting an associative array
• words will be in the right sequence when they're moved into their group (by initial letter)

Full example

 $my_array = [ 'Alpha', 'Amakeaviral', 'Boki', 'Bone', 'Aloo', 'Zeta' ]; // Sort words in the array sort($my_array); // Get words grouped by initials $grouped_word_list = []; foreach ( $my_array as $word ) { $word_initial = strtoupper($word[0]); $grouped_word_list[ $word_initial ][] = $word; } // Print result var_dump($grouped_word_list);