Page 600 - Beginning PHP 5.3

Part III: Using PHP in Practice
$text = “Andy scored 184 points, Rachel attained 198 points and Bert scored
112 points.”;

$pattern = “/
(Andy|Rachel|Bert)\ # Only match people we know about
(scored|attained)\ # Two words, same meaning
(\d+) # The number of points scored
/x”;

preg_match_all( $pattern, $text, $matches );

for ( $i = 0; $i < count( $matches[0] ); $i++ ) {
echo $matches[1][$i] . “: “ . $matches[3][$i] . “ < br / > ”;
}

This code produces the following output:

Andy: 184
Rachel: 198

Bert: 112
Finally, here ’ s an example that uses the e modifier. This is the same example used in the
preg_replace_callback() section earlier in the chapter, rewritten to use e instead:

$text = “Our high-quality mouse mat is just $3.99,
while our keyboard covers sell for $4.99 and our
screen protectors for only $5.99.”;

echo preg_replace( “/\\$(\d+\.\d{2})/e”, “’$’ . ($1 + 1)”, $text );

For each match, the PHP code within the replacement string displays a dollar symbol followed by the
text from the subpattern match (the price) plus one. This results in the following output:

Our high-quality mouse mat is just $4.99, while our keyboard covers sell for
$5.99 and our screen protectors for only $6.99.

You can combine several modifiers at once — just add the modifier letters one after the other:
$text = “Hello, World!\nHow are you today?\n”;
echo preg_match( “/world!$/im”, $text ) . “ < br / > ”; // Displays “1”

You can see the full list of pattern modifiers at http://www.php.net/manual/en/reference
.pcre.pattern.modifiers.php .
Splitting a String with a Regular
Expression

The final regular expression function explored in this chapter is preg_split() . In Chapter 6 you
studied the explode() function, which allows you to split a string into an array of substrings.
You pass in a delimiter string (a comma, for example) and the target string is split at each place the
delimiter is found.
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