Match sub-strings that start with a character - php

I want to match parts of a string that start with a certain character (asterisk):
abc*DEFxyz => *DEF
abc*DE*Fxyz => *DE, *F
Tried preg_match_all('/[$\*A-Z]+/', $string, $matches); But it doesn't seem to work. I get *DE*F on the 2nd example

Change your regex to this :
\*[A-Z]+
http://regexr.com?34itc
Your regex here : [$\*A-Z]+ means a string containing * and A-Z characters, not mentioning anything about start.

Try:
^[^*]*\*
which says "from the start of the line, skip over all non-asterisk characters and stop at the first"
Extending this:
s/^[^*]*\*(.*)/
Will return the remainder of the string after the asterisk. To include the asterisk, adjust like this
s/^[^*]*(\*.*)/
Here's a great tool for checking your regex: http://gskinner.com/RegExr/
Hope this helps

Related

preg_match for select string like #__james_name

I need a regular expression for select some text like #__james_name in PHP
I tried with :
(^#__[a-z]*)*
But I did not succeed.
help please
UPDATE
I tried with :
\#__([a-z]*)_([a-z]*)
How to using this in preg_match ?
Your grouping is a bit wrong, try
^#_(_[a-z]+)*
see it here on Regexr.
^ is the anchor to the start of the string, you don't want to repeat that. I replaced also the * with a + inside the group, so it requires at least one letter.
Now the string has to start with "#_" and then there can be 0 or more parts starting with an underscore followed by one or more (lowercase) letters.
This regex will match:
#_
#__a
#__a_b
#__a_b_ccccc_d_efadsfaksdjh
preg_match('/(^#__[a-z_]*)/', '#__james_name', $matches);
Do like this
$str=preg_replace('/^#__([\w]+)/', '$1', $str);

match regex php between two string with string in middle

I would like to get a string made of one word with a delimiter word before and after it
i tried but doen t work
$stringData2 = file_get_contents('testtext3.txt');
$regular2=('/(?<=first del)*MAIN WORD(?=last del)*\s');
preg_match_all($regular2,
$stringData2,
$out, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
thank you very much for any help
No quantifier needed, add delimeter at end, put \s inside lookahead.
'/(?<=first del)MAIN WORD(?=last del\s)/'
This regex
(?<=xx)[^\s]*(?=yy)
matches hello in:
xxhelloyy
but fails to match in:
xxhello worldyy
This is probably what you're looking for.
If you want the delimiter string included in the match, then you should not be using lookahead or look or look behind. It should be something rather basic, like this.
/\s?first del MAIN WORD last del\s?/
If you do want to return JUST the MAIN WORD part of the match, then this will work.
/(?<=\s?first del)MAIN WORD(?=last del\s?)/
Put a 'i' at the very end of that to make it case insensitive, if you want. I only mention this, because in the example you gave me above has different case between the example text and the desired response.

Regex to extract substring

really struggling with this...hopefully someone can put me on the right path to a solution.
My input string is structured like this:
66-2141-A-AC107-7
I'm interested in extracting the string 'AC107' using a single regular expression. I know how to do this with other PHP string functions, but I have to do this with a regular expression.
What I need is to extract all data between the third and fourth hyphens. The structure of each section is not fixed (i.e, 66 may be 8798709 and 2141 may be 38). The presence of the number of hyphens is guaranteed (i.e., there will always be a total of four (4) hyphens).
Any help/guidance is greatly appreciated!
This will do what you need:
(?:[^-]*-){3}([^-]+)
Debuggex Demo
Explanation:
(?:[^-]*-) Look for zero or more non-hyphen characters followed by a hyphen
{3} Look for three of the blocks just described
([^-]+) Capture all the consecutive non-hyphen characters from that point forward (will automatically cut off before the next hyphen)
You can use it in PHP like this:
$str = '66-2141-A-AC107-7';
preg_match('/^(?:[^-]*-){3}([^-]+)/', $str, $matches);
echo $matches[1]; // prints AC107
This should look for anything followed by a hyphen 3 times and then in group 2 (the second set of parenthesis) it will have your value, followed by another hyphen and anything else.
/^(.*-){3}(.*)-(.*)/
You can access it by using $2. In php, it would be like this:
$string = '66-2141-A-AC107-7';
preg_match('/^(.*-){3}(.*)-(.*)/', $string, $matches);
$special_id = $matches[2];
print $special_id;

Regex pattern to match any character except the last one

I am trying to match a string using two different patterns to work together.
My source string is something like this:
Text, white-spaces, new lines and more text then ^^^^<customtag>
I need to get a group (the second one) that would capture one caret or none then a formatted HTML-like tag. So the first group would capture anything else.
It means that the string above should output this:
(Group 1)Text, white-spaces, new lines and more text then ^^^
(Group 2)^<customtag>
In the source string carets may be one, none or up to two thousands.
I need a good pattern that matches all those carets except the last one.
The code below is what I tried.
preg_match_all('/([\s\S]*\^*)(\^?<\w+>)$/', $string, $matches);
Please note: I used [\s\S] instead of the dot to match any character as well as white-spaces and new lines too.
You may follow the below regex:
(?s)(.*)((\^|(?<!\^))<[^>]+>)
Live demo
PHP code:
preg_match_all('/(?s)(.*)((\^|(?<!\^))<[^>]+>)/', $string, $matches);
You can use as this:
preg_match_all('/(.*)((\^<[^>]*>)|([^\^]<[^>]*>))$/', $string, $matches);
See it working here: http://regexr.com?383g9
In this other link it is working fine: http://regex101.com/r/eQ3vV7

Replacing a string using preg_match

I'm having trouble using preg_match to find and replace a string. The string of interest is:
<span style="font-size:0.6em">EXPIRATION DATE: 04/30/2011</span>
I need to target and replace the date, "04/30/2011" with a different date. Can someone throw me a bone a give me the regular expression to match this pattern using preg_match in PHP? I also need it to match in such a way that it only replaces up to the first closing span and not closing span tags later in the code, e.g.:
<span style="font-size:0.6em">EXPIRATION DATE: 04/30/2011</span><span class="hello"></span>
I'm not versed in regex, and although I've spent the last hour trying to learn enough to make this work, I'm utterly failing. Thanks so much!
EDIT: As you can see this has gotten me exhausted. I did mean preg_replace, not preg_match.
If you're after a replacement, consider using preg_replace(), something like
preg_replace('#(\d{2})/(\d{2})/(\d{4})#', '<new date>', $string);
How about this:
$toBeFoundPattern = '/([0-9][0-9])\/([0-9][0-9])\/([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])/';
$toBeReplacedPattern = '$2.$1.$3';
$inString = '<span style="font-size:0.6em">EXPIRATION DATE: 04/30/2011</span>';
// Will convert from US date format 04/30/2011 to european format 30.04.2011
echo preg_replace( $toBeFoundPattern, $toBeReplacedPattern, $inString );
and prints
EXPIRATION DATE: 30.04.2011
Patterns always begin and end with identical so called delimiter characters. Often the character / is used.
$1 references the string, which matched the first string matched by ([0-9][0-9]), $2 references be (...) and $3 the four letters matched by the last (...).
[...] matched a single character, which is one of those listed inside the brackets. E.g. [a-z] matches all lower case letters.
To use the special meaning character / inside of a pattern, you need to escape it by \ to make it be the literal slash character.
Update: Using {..} as pointed out below is shorthand for repeated patterns.
Regex should be:
(0[1-9]|1[012])[- /.](0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])[- /.](19|20)\d\d
If you want to only match one instance, this is OK. For multiple instances, use preg_match_all instead. Taken from http://www.regular-expressions.info/regexbuddy/datemmddyyyy.html.
Edit: are you looking to just search and replace inside a PHP script or do you want to do some javascript live replacement?

Categories