Matching a string to another string with PHP

Question

Im trying to filter some entry's in a While loop. This i'm trying to do with the strpos function, unfortunately when i use a variable as needle, i do not get an result.

No result: $tra = strpos($HRreq, $entry_type)

result: $tra = strpos($HRreq, "string");

But, i need it to be variable in the while loop.

$select_exec = odbc_exec($amos_db,$select_personnel);
    while ($row = odbc_fetch_array($select_exec)){
        $username = $row['user_sign'];
        $entry_type = $row['entry_type'];
        $fullname1 = $row['lastname'] . $row['firstname'];
        $fullname = trim(preg_replace('/ +/', ' ', preg_replace('/[^A-Za-z0-9 ]/', ' ', urldecode(html_entity_decode(strip_tags($fullname1))))));
        $userno = $row['employee_no_i'];
        $tra = strpos($HRreq, "$entry_type");
        echo $entry_type ." = ". $tra;
        }

I've added part of the code since the code is more than 500 lines long. I hope this is enough to get an idea of what i'm trying to accomplish

Answer 1

I discovered that the database returned with white spaces after the variable. I added a trim() and the problem was solved. It was a silly mistake.