PHP PCRE - match different subpattern name depending on context

Question

As the title states, I started thinking about how to match, for example, 2 different subpatterns in a regex applied on a string, on the condition that if the content has only numbers it will be assigned the subpattern name <id>, otherwise (letters or letters + numbers) assigned as <action>. The context is a PHP router class I'm writting out.

This is a portion of the condition used to match an action containing words :

(?P<action>[\w]+)

Any ideas?

Give more information about how the input strings can look like — hek2mgl, Mar 05 '13 at 20:00
@Wrikken Yes, I shall try that (I assumed it required magic) — yoda, Mar 05 '13 at 21:33
@Wrikken sorry for the delay, if you post your answer I'll accept it. — yoda, Sep 04 '13 at 01:55
@HamZa: wow, blast from the past... But yeah, let's clean up the unanswered questions ;) — Wrikken, Jan 23 '14 at 14:56

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 23 '14 at 14:57

2

Simply make 2 subpatterns & OR them (|):

(?P<id>[\d]+)|(?P<action>[\w]+)

answered Jan 23 '14 at 14:57

Wrikken

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PHP PCRE - match different subpattern name depending on context

1 Answers1