PHP preg_match getting string between 2 chars

Question

Please consider this string:

$string = 'hello world /foo bar/';

The end result I wish to obtain:

$result1 = 'hello world';
$result2 = 'foo bar';

What I've tried:

preg_match('/\/(.*?)\//', $string, $match);

Trouble is this only return "foo bar" and not "hello world". I can probably strip "/foo bar/" from the original string, but in my real use case that would take additional 2 steps.

Possible duplicate of [preg\_match for multiple words](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9689521/preg-match-for-multiple-words) — Tuesdave, Jan 25 '16 at 17:05
Are you looking for how to do this with a regex or just how to do it. For why the regex doesn't work see, https://regex101.com/r/pZ4bL2/1. — chris85, Jan 25 '16 at 17:16

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 25 '16 at 17:14

2

$result = explode("/", $string);

results in

$result[0] == 'hello world ';
$result[1] == 'foo bar';

You might want to replace the space in hello world. More info here: http://php.net/manual/de/function.explode.php

edited Jan 25 '16 at 17:14

chris85

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answered Jan 25 '16 at 17:11

MarkHim

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This will result in: $result[1] == 'foo bar/'; Also it's not applicable to my real use case. – Mike Feng Jan 25 '16 at 17:11
3

huh, pretty sure it will be $result[1] == 'foo bar' and $result[2] will be an empty string, since all / are replaced – MarkHim Jan 25 '16 at 17:14
Ok in any case, explode is not applicable in my real use case because the number of array items matter and it's not constant. – Mike Feng Jan 25 '16 at 17:20

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 25 '16 at 17:22

The regular expression only matches what you tell it to match. So you need to have it match everything including the /s and then group the /s.

This should do it:

$string = 'hello world /foo bar/';
preg_match('~(.+?)\h*/(.*?)/~', $string, $match);
print_r($match);

PHP Demo: https://eval.in/507636
Regex101: https://regex101.com/r/oL5sX9/1 (delimiters escaped, in PHP usage changed the delimiter)

The 0 index is everything found, 1 the first group, 2 the second group. So between the /s is $match[2]; the hello world is $match[1]. The \h is any horizontal whitespace before the / if you want that in the first group remove the \h*. The . will account for whitespace (excluding new line unless specified with s modifier).

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 25 '16 at 19:00

0

To solve this conversion issue, use below code.

$string      = 'hello world /foo bar/';
$returnValue =  str_replace(' /', '/', $string);
$result      =  explode("/", $returnValue);

If you want to print it, put below lines in your code.

echo $pieces[0]; // hello world
echo $pieces[1]; // foo bar

https://eval.in/507650

edited Jan 25 '16 at 19:00

AsgarAli

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answered Jan 25 '16 at 17:46

LuanComputacao

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PHP preg_match getting string between 2 chars

3 Answers3