Regex for extracing multiple email addresses in PHP

Question

I'm receiving content such as:

"Jane Doe" <jane@doe.com>, "John Doe" <john@doe.com>

And I would like to extract the email addresses:

jane@doe.com, john@doe.com

Currently I have a regex like this:

/<(.*)>/

Which gets everything in between brackets, but it also gets things like:

jane@doe.com>, "John Doe" <john@doe.com

When I used an @ sign in the middle, it also didn't work quite right:

/<(.*)@(.*)>/

I could explode() based on the comma, but I'm thinking there ought to be a way for preg_match() to give me what I want. What am I missing in my regex?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 17 '12 at 19:47

3

Your regexp is too greedy. Use /<(.*?)>/ instead, or better even something like

/<([^<>]+@[^<>]+)>/

edited Apr 17 '12 at 19:47

Wiseguy

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answered Apr 17 '12 at 19:45

Bergi

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score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 17 '12 at 19:47

I use this for matching emails, I know there are other expressions out there in the wild that may catch more email address but I find this one quick to type and so far suits all my needs, feel free to give it a try:

/\w+[\.\w]+@\w+[\.\w]+/

You may want to use this with preg_match_all to capture all the addresses

for example:

$string = '"Jane Doe" <jane@doe.com>, "John Doe" <john@doe.com>';
preg_match_all('/\w+[\.\w]+@\w+[\.\w]+/', $string, $matches);
print_r($matches);

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 17 '12 at 19:40

1

Easiest way is to match everything except the final delimeter:

/<([^>]*)>/

answered Apr 17 '12 at 19:40

GavinCattell

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 17 '12 at 19:40

0

You are including too much with the dot. Try this:

/<([^>]*)>/

answered Apr 17 '12 at 19:40

JoelFan

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Regex for extracing multiple email addresses in PHP

4 Answers4