Re: Regular Expression

As someone else mentioned, filenames with embedded spaces can be confusing and should be avoided where possible (in the future, I'd replace the space with an underscore _). However, the following will do what you want (untested): $regs = preg_split('/\w+/', $dirline, 9); $regs[8] will contain the filename, even if it has spaces. Explanation: the regex splits the line on strings of whitespace (spaces, tabs, etc.), for a maximum of 9 elements. Since $regs[8], containing the filename, is the ninth element, the rest of the line is dumped into that element without further regex processing. Since the spacing pattern remains the same from a unix ls -l command no matter what the file size or date is, you should be ok. See http://php.he.net/manual/en/function.preg-split.php for more info. Also, if you are doing something like $output = ls -l; and then parsing the output you may want to investigate PHP's file/directory functions instead: http://php.he.net/manual/en/ref.dir.php http://php.he.net/manual/en/ref.filesystem.php -steve At 10:33 PM -0800 11/6/02, Salman wrote:

Hi, I have this ereg call ereg("([-d])[rwxst-]{9}.* [0-9]* [a-zA-Z]+ [0-9: ]* (.+)",$dirline,$regs); This regular expressions parses the following line:

drwxrwxrwx   1 owner    group               0 Nov  5 23:19 fantasy

to return: fantasy (or in general any filename/directory name) The above regular expression works fine in every except when the filename is something like this:

drwxrwxrwx   1 owner    group               0 Nov  5 23:19 6 fantasy

Notice in this case the filename is "6 fantasy" however $regs[1] returns only: "fantasy" Can anyone help me to fix this problem. Thanks a bunch

-- +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Steve Edberg sbedberg@ucdavis.edu | | University of California, Davis (530)754-9127 | | Programming/Database/SysAdmin http://pgfsun.ucdavis.edu/ | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | SETI@Home: 1001 Work units on 23 oct 2002 | | 3.152 years CPU time, 3.142 years SETI user... and STILL no aliens... | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+