You can use regular expressions:
$string = "This is their cat with a hat in the theater";
$regex1 = "/.*? is |^is/";
$regex2 = "/ the .*| the$/";
echo preg_replace($regex1, '', preg_replace($regex2, ' the', $string));
EDIT Here is more generic code:
function find($text, $str, $offset) {
$len = strlen($text);
$search_len = strlen($str);
$count = 0;
for ($i=0; $i<$len; ++$i) {
if (substr($text, $i, $search_len) == $str) {
if (++$count == $offset) {
return $i;
}
}
}
return -1;
}
function between($text, $word1, $offset1, $word2, $offset2) {
$start = find($text, $word1, $offset1);
$end = find($text, $word2, $offset2);
if ($start != -1 && $end != -1) {
return substr($text, $start + strlen($word1), $end-$start-strlen($word2));
} else {
return '';
}
}
$string = "This is their cat with a hat in the theater";
echo between($string, 'is', 2, 'the', 3);
echo between($string, 'at', 1, 'at', 3);