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Basics of the PHP PCRE functions

I'm only going to talk about the three I use the most but, there are a number of useful PCRE functions in PHP.

preg_match

int preg_match ( string $pattern , string $subject [, array &$matches [, int $flags [, int $offset ]]] )

preg_match returns 0 for no match or 1 if a match was found. It's important to note that preg_match stops searching after the first match. Use preg_match_all if you need all matches within a string.

You can get back any backreferences by passing an empty array as the $matches argument.

Here's a simple example that we use to parse a string like 'variable = value' into pieces:

$regex = '/^\s*(.*?)\s*=\s*(.*?)\s*$/';$subject = 'variable = value';$matches = array();if( preg_match($regex, $subject, $matches) ) {    echo '<pre>' . print_r($matches, true) . '</pre>';}

which outputs this:

Array(    [0] => variable = value    [1] => variable    [2] => value)

Another handy trick is to use extended regular expressions (/pattern/x) which lets you space the pattern across multiple lines and even include comments:

$regex = '/^          \s*(.*?)\s*  #Match group 1 contains the value on the left side of the =, excluding any whitespace          =          \s*(.*?)\s*  #Match group 2 contains the value on the right side.          $/x';

preg_replace

mixed preg_replace ( mixed $pattern , mixed $replacement , mixed $subject [, int $limit= -1 [, int &$count ]] )

Most of the time str_replace is sufficient (and faster!) but preg_replace has some great uses as well. In its most basic form, you pass it a regular expression and a replacement value and it replaces all matches.

Using the regex and subject in the previous example, let's see how we can use preg_replace to reverse the values on either side of the =. If we start with 'variable = value', we want to end up with 'value = variable'.

$regex = '/^\s*(.*?)\s*=\s*(.*?)\s*$/';$subject = 'variable = value';echo preg_replace($regex, '$2 = $1', $subject);

Our regular expression creates two backreferences, one for each value on either side of the = side. We can refer to these by number ($1 and $2) in the replacement string which makes it very easy to reverse them.

preg_split

array preg_split ( string $pattern , string $subject [, int $limit= -1 [, int $flags= 0 ]] )

Again explode or str_split will be more efficient if you don't actually need regular expressions to split your string.

Here's an example that splits a sentence into words using whitespace, commas, or periods as the delimiter:

$subject = 'The quick, brown, fox.  jumped over, the lazy dog.';$data = preg_split( '/[\s,.]+/', $subject);echo '<pre>'' . print_r($data, true) . '</pre>';

which outputs this

Array(    [0] => The    [1] => quick    [2] => brown    [3] => fox    [4] => jumped    [5] => over    [6] => the    [7] => lazy    [8] => dog    [9] => )

If you're looking for tutorials and documentation on lots of different flavors of regular expressions, I highly recommend Regular-Expressions.info.