Re: preg_match and dates

Per Jessen wrote:

Michael A. Peters wrote:

What I'm trying to do is write a preg matches for each case I come across - if it matches the preg, it then parses according to the pattern to get me an acceptable YYYY-MM-DD (not sure how I'll deal with the season case yet ... but I'm serious, that kind of thing in there several times) To at least get started though, is there a wildcard defined that says match a month? IE /^([0-9]{2})[\s-](MONTH_MATCH)[\s-]([0-9]{4,4}$/ where MONTH is some special magic that matches Mar March Apr April etc. ?

Just write one yourself.

This is what I have so far - $pattern[] = "/^([0-9]{1,2})[\s-]([A-Z][a-z]*)[\s-]([0-9]{4,4})$/i"; $clean[] = "\\3-\\2-\\1"; $pattern[] = "/^([A-Z][a-z]*)[\s-]([0-9]{4,4})$/"; $clean[] = "\\2-\\1-01"; $foo = preg_replace($pattern, $clean, $verb_date); That was enough for me to discover some collectors have two digit years and I can't differentiate 1902 from 2002 so I'll have to flag those and bug the curator to fix 'em. I'd rather have ([A-Z][a-z]*) be replaced with something that makes sure it is a valid short or long month, writing one myself is not impossible but if there is a date wildcard (or a tried and proven pattern) that can match month built into php then it is better to use it, no?