php: Page 2

I can never seem to locate a guide that has an easy explanation of the common regular expressions that I use on a regular basis. I usually just find bits and pieces, or find the right info, but not displayed in a way that’s easy to reference. So here’s my own notes on RegEx

Character	Usage
.	wildcard character - will match anything
\|	or operator - (this\|that) will match either
-	range selector - will match a range of character or numbers i.e. 1-9
[]	match any character inside the brackets [aeiou] would match anything with a vowel.
^	match the start of a string - ^a will match 'atlas' but not 'mad'
[^]	don't match - it will negate what you put inside like [^cheese]
$	match the end of a string - at$ will match 'mat' but not 'saturn'
?	match preceding character 0-1 times - tree? will match 'tre', 'tree', but not 'treee'
*	match preceding character 0+ time - same as * except it would match 'treee'+
+	match preceding character 1+ times - this version will not match 'tre'
{#}	match preceding character # times - tree{3} will match 'treeee'
{#,#2}	match preceding character at least #, but not more than #2 - tree{3,4} will match 'treeee' or 'treeeee'
i	case insensitive flag - add at end i.e. '#(regex)#i'
s	dotall flag - make the "." character match anything
x	verbose flag - ignore all whitespace and allows "#" commenting

Regular expression syntax

One piece I use often as kind of a ‘match-all’ is “(.*?)” so preg_match_all(‘#<a>(.*?)</a>#is’, $content, $matches); would match everything in the string that is within anchor tags.

The delimiter can also be changed, in the previous example it is the “#” pound character, but could easily be changed to “/” as in ‘/<a>(.*?)</a>/is’ or changed into whatever is most convenient for the enclosed string.

Wannabe

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Regular Expressions