I have a string that contains 5 words. In the string one of the words is a Ham Radio Call Sign and can be anyone of the thousands of call signs in the US. In order to extract the Call Sign from the string I need to utilize the below pattern. The Call Sign I need to extract can be in any of the 5 positions in the string. The number is never the first character and the number is never the last character. The string is actually put together from an Array since it is originally read from a text file.
$string = $word[1] $word[2] $word[3] etc....
So the search can be either done on the whole string or each piece of the array.
Patterns:
1 Number and 3 Letters Example: AB4C A4BC
1 Number and 4 Letters Example: A4BCD
1 Number and 5 Letters Example: AB4CDE
I have tried everything I can think of and search till I cant search no more. I am sure I am over thinking this.
A two-step regular expression like this would do it:
$str = "hello A4AB there BC5AD";
$signs = array();
preg_match_all('/[A-Z][A-Z\d]{1,3}[A-Z]/', $str, $possible_signs);
foreach($possible_signs[0] as $possible_sign)
if (preg_match('/^\D+\d\D+$/', $possible_sign))
array_push($signs, $possible_sign);
print_r($signs); //Array ([0] => A4AB [1] => BC5AD)
Explanation
This is a regular expression approach, using two patterns. I don't think it could be done with one and still satisfy the exact requirements of the matching rules.
The first pattern enforces the following requirements:
substring starts and ends with a capital letter
substring contains only other capital letters or numbers between the first and last letter
substring is, overall, not more than 6 characters long
What I can't do in that same pattern, for complex REGEX reasons I won't go into (unless someone knows a way and can correct me), is enforce that only one number is contained.
#jeroen's answer does enforce this in a single pattern, but in turn does not enforce the correct length of the substring. Either way, we need a second pattern.
So after grabbing the initial matches, we loop over the results. We then apply each to a second pattern that enforces simply that there is only one number in the substring.
If so, we green-light the substring and it's added to the $signs array.
Hope this helps.
It depends on what the other words can contain, but you could use a regular expression like:
#\b[a-z]+\d[a-z]+\b#i
^ case insensitive
^^ a word boundary
^^^^^^ One or more letters
^^ One number
You can make it more restrictive by using {1,3} instead of + for the letters so that you have a sequence of 1 to 3 letters.
The complete expression would be something like:
$success = preg_match('#\b[a-z]+\d[a-z]+\b#i', $input_string, $matches);
where $matches[0] will contain the matched value, see the manual.
Related
I have a value like this 73b6424b. I want to split value into two parts. Like 73b6 and 424b. Then the two split value want to reverse. Like 424b and 73b6. And concatenate this two value like this 424b73b6. I have already done this like way
$substr_device_value = 73b6424b;
$first_value = substr($substr_device_value,0,4);
$second_value = substr($substr_device_value,4,8);
$final_value = $second_value.$first_value;
I am searching more than easy way what I have done. Is it possible?? If yes then approach please
You may use
preg_replace('~^(.{4})(.{4})$~', '$2$1', $s)
See the regex demo
Details
^ - matches the string start position
(.{4}) - captures any 4 chars into Group 1 ($1)
(.{4}) - captures any 4 chars into Group 2 ($2)
$ - end of string.
The '$2$1' replacement pattern swaps the values.
NOTE: If you want to pre-validate the data before swapping, you may replace . pattern with a more specific one, say, \w to only match word chars, or [[:alnum:]] to only match alphanumeric chars, or [0-9a-z] if you plan to only match strings containing digits and lowercase ASCII letters.
I have a php pull down that I select an item and delete
all files associated with it.
It works well if there was only 5 or 6. After I put the
first 4 to test and get it working I realized it could
take a very long time to enter in a couple hundred and
would blot the script.
Not knowing enough about for and while loops is there
anyone that might have a way to help?
There will never be more than one set deleted at a time.
Thanks in advance.
<?php
$workitem = $_POST["workitem"];
$workdirPAth = "/var/work.files/";
if($workitem == 'item1.php')
{
unlink("$workdirPath/page1.php");
unlink("$workdirPath/temp1.php");
unlink("$workdirPath/all1.php");
}
if($workitem == 'item2.php')
{
unlink("$workdirPath/page2.php");
unlink("$workdirPath/temp2.php");
unlink("$workdirPath/all2.php");
}
if($workitem == 'item3.php')
{
unlink("$workdirPath/page3.php");
unlink("$workdirPath/temp3.php");
unlink("$workdirPath/all3.php");
}
if($workitem == 'item4.php')
{
unlink("$workdirPath/page4.php");
unlink("$workdirPath/temp4.php");
unlink("$workdirPath/all3.php");
?>
Some simple pattern matching and substitution is all you need here.
First, the code:
1. if (preg_match('/^item(\d+)\.php$/', $workitem, $matches)) {
2. $number = $matches[1];
3. foreach(array('page','temp','all') as $base) {
4. unlink("$workdirPath/$base$number.php");
5. }
6. } else {
7. # unrecognized work item value; complain to user or whatever
8. }
The preg_match function takes a pattern, a string, and an array. If the string matches the pattern, the parts that match are stored in the array. The particular type of pattern is a *p*erl5-compatible *reg*ular expression, which is where the preg_ part of the name comes from.
Regular expressions are scary-looking to the uninitiated, but they're a handy way to scan a string and get some values out of it. Most characters just represent themselves; the string "foo" matches the regular expression /foo/. But some characters have special meanings that let you make more general patterns to match a whole set of strings where you don't have to know ahead of time exactly what's in them.
The /s just mark the beginning and end of the actual regular expression; they're there because you can stick additional modifier flags inside the string along with the expression itself.
The ^and $ arepresent the beginning and end of the string. "/foo/" matches "foo", but also "foobar", "bunnyfoofoo", and so on - any string that contains "foo" will match. But /^foo$/ matches only "foo" exactly.
\d means "any digit". + means "one or more of that last thing". So \d+ means "one or more digits".
The period (.) is special; it matches any character at all. Since we want a literal period, we have to escape it with a backslash; \. just matches a period.
So our regular expression is '/^item\d+\.php$/', which will match any itemnumber.php filename. But that's not quite enough. The preg_match function is basically a binary test: does the string match the pattern or not, yes or no? In this case, it's not enough to just say "yup, the string is valid"; we need to know which items specifically the user specified. That's what capture groups are for. We use parentheses to say "remember what matched this part", and provide an array name that gets filled with those remembrances.
The part of the string that matches the whole regular expression (which may not be the whole string, if the regular expression isn't anchored with ^...$ like this one is) is always put in element 0 of the array. If you use parentheses in the regular expression, then the part of the string that matches the part of the regular expression inside the first pair of parentheses is stored in element 1 of the array; if there's a second set of parentheses, the matching part of the string goes in element 2 of the array, and so on.
So we put parentheses around our number ((\d+)) and then the actual number will be remembered in element 1 of our $matches array.
Great, we have a number. Now we just need to use it to build up the filenames we want to delete.
In each case, we want to delete three files: page$n.php, temp$n.php, and all$n.php, where $n is the number we extracted above. We could just put three unlink calls, but since they're all so similar, we can use a loop instead.
Take the different prefixes that are the same no matter the number, and make an array out of them. Then loop over that array. In the body of the loop, the variable $base will contain whichever element of the array it's currently on. Stick that between the $workdirPath prefix and the $number we got from the match, append .php, and that's your file. unlink it and go back to the top of the loop to grab the next one.
As title, is there a way in PHP, with preg_match_all to catch all the repetitions of chars group?
For instante catch
hahahaha
jajajaj
hihihi
It's fine to catch repetition of any char, like abababab, acacacacac.
Also, is there a way to count the number of repetition?
The idea is to catch all this "forms" of smiling on social media.
I figured out that there are also other cases, such as misspelled instances like ahahhahaah (where you have two consecutive a or h). Any ideas?
How about this:
preg_match_all('/((?i)[a-z])((?i)[a-z])(\1\2)+/', $str, $m);
$matches = $m[0]; //$matches will contain an array of matches
A bit complicated, but it does work. To explain, the first subpattern (((?i)[a-z])) matches any character between a and z, no matter the case. The second subpattern (((?i)[a-z])) does the same thing. The third subpattern ((\1\2)+) matches one or more repetitions of the first two letters, in the same case as they were originally put. This regular expression also assumes that there's an even number of repetitions. If you don't want that, you can add \1? at the end, meaning that (as long as it contains one or more repetitions), it can end with the first character (for instance, hahah and ikikikik would both be valid, but not asa).
To retrieve the number of repetitions for a specific match, you can do:
$numb = strlen($matches[$index])/2 - 1; //-1 because the first two letters aren't repetitions
For the shortest repetition (e.g. ha gets repeated multiple times in hahahaha):
(.+?)\1+
See demo.
For the longest repetition (e.g. haha gets repeated in hahahaha):
(.+)\1+
Counting Repetitions
The non-regex solution is to compare the lengths of Group 1 (the repteated token) and the overall match.
With pure regex, in .NET, you could simply do (.+?)(\1)+ and look at the number of captures in the Group 1 CaptureCollection object.
In PHP, that's not possible, but there are some hacks. See, for instance, this question about matching a line number—it's the same technique. This is for "study purposes" only—you wouldn't want to use that in real life.
I found some partial help but cannot seem to fully accomplish what I need. I need to be able to do the following:
I need an regular expression to replace any 1 to 3 character words between two words that are longer than 3 characters with a match any expression:
For example:
walk to the beach ==> walk(.*)beach
If the 1 to 3 character word is not preceded by a word that's longer than 3 characters then I want to translate that 1 to 3 letter word to '<word> ?'
For example:
on the beach ==> on ?the ?beach
The simpler the rule the better (of course, if there's an alternative more complicated version that's more performant then I'll take that as well as I eventually anticipate heavy usage eventually).
This will be used in a PHP context most likely with preg_replace. Thus, if you can put it in that context then even better!
By the way so far I have got the following:
$string = preg_replace('/\s+/', '(.*)', $string);
$string = preg_replace('/\b(\w{1,3})(\.*)\b/', '${1} ?', $string);
but that results in:
walk to the beach ==> 'walk(.*)to ?beach'
which is not what I want. 'on the beach' seems to translate correctly.
I think you will need two replacements for that. Let's start with the first requirement:
$str = preg_replace('/(\w{4,})(?: \w{1,3})* (?=\w{4,})/', '$1(.*)', $str);
Of course, you need to replace those \w (which match letters, digits and underscores) with a character class of what you actually want to treat as a word character.
The second one is a bit tougher, because matches cannot overlap and lookbehinds cannot be of variable length. So we have to run this multiple times in a loop:
do
{
$str = preg_replace('/^\w{0,3}(?: \w{0,3})* (?!\?)/', '$0?', $str, -1, $count);
} while($count);
Here we match everything from the beginning of the string, as long as it's only up-to-3-letter words separated by spaces, plus one trailing space (only if it is not already followed by a ?). Then we put all of that back in place, and append a ?.
Update:
After all the talk in the comments, here is an updated solution.
After running the first line, we can assume that the only less-than-3-letter words left will be at the beginning or at the end of the string. All others will have been collapsed to (.*). Since you want to append all spaces between those with ?, you do not even need a loop (in fact these are the only spaces left):
$str = preg_replace('/ /', ' ?', $str);
(Do this right after my first line of code.)
This would give the following two results (in combination with the first line):
let us walk on the beach now go => let ?us ?walk(.*)beach ?now ?go
let us walk on the beach there now go => let ?us ?walk(.*)beach(.*)there ?now ?go
I'm trying to check if a string has a certain number of occurrence of a character.
Example:
$string = '123~456~789~000';
I want to verify if this string has exactly 3 instances of the character ~.
Is that possible using regular expressions?
Yes
/^[^~]*~[^~]*~[^~]*~[^~]*$/
Explanation:
^ ... $ means the whole string in many regex dialects
[^~]* a string of zero or more non-tilde characters
~ a tilde character
The string can have as many non-tilde characters as necessary, appearing anywhere in the string, but must have exactly three tildes, no more and no less.
As single character is technically a substring, and the task is to count the number of its occurences, I suppose the most efficient approach lies in using a special PHP function - substr_count:
$string = '123~456~789~000';
if (substr_count($string, '~') === 3) {
// string is valid
}
Obviously, this approach won't work if you need to count the number of pattern matches (for example, while you can count the number of '0' in your string with substr_count, you better use preg_match_all to count digits).
Yet for this specific question it should be faster overall, as substr_count is optimized for one specific goal - count substrings - when preg_match_all is more on the universal side. )
I believe this should work for a variable number of characters:
^(?:[^~]*~[^~]*){3}$
The advantage here is that you just replace 3 with however many you want to check.
To make it more efficient, it can be written as
^[^~]*(?:~[^~]*){3}$
This is what you are looking for:
EDIT based on comment below:
<?php
$string = '123~456~789~000';
$total = preg_match_all('/~/', $string);
echo $total; // Shows 3