PHP Checking if a string starts with #

I know theres functions for this but the ones i've tried wont work with the character '#' The one im using right now is

function startsWithChar($ne开发者_StackOverflowedle, $haystack)
{
   return ($needle[0] === $haystack);
}

and it returns false when I try to check for '#'.

Does anyone know a function that works with the '#' character?

EDIT: I noticed that the function works, the problem is that I'm trying to do this using GET. Apparantly the string gets ignored when a GET begins with # (search.php?query=#asd). Do you know a workaround for this?

Are you confusing your needle and your haystack?

function startsWithChar($needle, $haystack) {
    return ($haystack[0] === $needle);
}

$string1 = 'Test';
var_dump(startsWithChar('#',$string1)) ;

$string2 = '#Test';
var_dump(startsWithChar('#',$string2)) ;

Now that you've edited, it all becomes clear. The literal '#' character in the URL is interpreted as the end of the query string and the start of the fragment, so your script is getting just "search.php?query=". Use %23 instead. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent_encoding for details.

How about this:

function startsWithChar($haystack, $needle){
    return mb_strpos($haystack, $needle) === 1;
}