Preg_match with different combinations of words - php

Question

I've a littile question about preg_matches, these regex things are really hard to understand and I hope someone can give the right awnser!
I have the following text:
0A-24-423
But this can also be:
0A-242-2
or
0A-2-423
How can I use preg_matches to filter these? I was using
substr($something, 0,2)
so that it captures 0A and
substr($seat, 4,5)
This will capture 24 but when you get 242 it wont capture the last 2....
Hope someone can help creating this in preg_match!
to make it more clear what I have now:
foreach($_POST['seats'] AS $seat) {
if ($count > 0) {
$selectQuery .= " || ";
}
$selectQuery .= " ( rowId = '" . substr($seat, 0,2) . "'";
$selectQuery .= " and `order` = " . substr($seat, 3,5) . " ";
$selectQuery .= " and columnId = " . substr($seat, 6) . " ) ";
$count++;
and $seat had the following format XXXXXX and using substr I can get the right things (for example: 0J3017)
Something Like this should do it:
$selectQuery = "SELECT * from seats where ";
$count = 0;
$pattern = "I DON'T KNOW :( ";
foreach($_POST['seats'] AS $seat) {
if ($count > 0) {
$selectQuery .= " || ";
}
preg_match($pattern, $seats, $matches);
$selectQuery .= " ( rowId = '" . $matches[0] . "'";
$selectQuery .= " and `order` = " . $matches[1] . " ";
$selectQuery .= " and columnId = " . $matches[2] . " ) ";
$count++;
and $seats is explained in the beginning of the post (it has a format of XX-XXX-XXX
where the first 2 XX are 0[A-Z] (yes the 0 is correct)
where the 3 first XXX are [0-9]
Where the last 3 XXX are [0-9]
EDIT:
there are 2 ways to solve this.
Option 1:
$pattern = "/(.*)-(.*)-(.*)/";
or use explode() function.

Answer 1

It does not look like you need to be using regular expressions. Here's an example using explode() and list():
list($row_id, $order, $column_id) = explode('-', $seat, 3);
You could then use those three new variables in your $selectQuery.

Answer 2

EDIT : Since the OP has stated his requirement as a comment to my answer I have updated my answer accordingly.
You can try this:
$pattern = "/[A-Z\d]{1,2}-[A-Z\d]{1,3}-[A-Z\d]{1,3}/";
$matched = preg_match($pattern, $something);
if ($matched === 0) {
die('regex did not match');
}
$matched will give you 1 for a matched string and 0 if not matched.