How to check if a string starts with a given substring in PHP?

Hello everyone! I'm a beginner in PHP and writing a small script for URL processing. I need to check if a string starts with a specific prefix, for example, "https://" or "/admin/". In other languages, I've seen functions like startsWith(), but in PHP, there doesn't seem to be one. I tried using strpos(), but it returns a position, not a boolean value. I had to write a workaround: $url = "https://example.com"; if (strpos($url, "https://") === 0) { echo "Starts with https"; } This works, but it looks ugly. I have to constantly write === 0, which is easy to forget or confuse with !== false. Is there a more elegant way? Maybe a built-in function or a short construct? I'd appreciate code examples and an explanation of how it works. Thanks!