Re: String /pattern formatting extraction question

On Mon, April 10, 2006 7:40 am, Andy wrote: > Hi to all, > > I have the following pattern for a string: > > text1 /ptext2 /otext3 > > Now, I want to extract the text by "patterns" from this string by the > following rule: > > no pattern -> text1 (what is before /o or /p) > /p -> text2 (what is after /p) > /o -> text3 (what is after /o) > > The order betweeen /o and /p can be switched, so there is no rule that > /p is before /o. > > How can I do this? I tried ereg but no success. Will there always be at least one /p or /o?... And I'm assuming you don't need the whitespace. And that text2 and text3 must not have embedded whitespace. Then you can do something like: <?php $pattern = '/^([^\\s])\\s(\\/(p|o)[^\\s])$/'; preg_match($pattern, $input, $output); print_r($output); ?> You may want to get a program called "The Regex Coach" which lets you type patterns/input and see the output in real-time. Incredibly handy/useful. Also, your syntax looks AMAZINGLY like the GetOpt patterns of command line arguments... If you could change '/' to '-', you'd find zillions of pre-built libraries to handle your strings. YMMV -- Like Music? http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm