preg_match_all
Perform a global regular expression match
Description
intpreg_match_all
stringpattern
stringsubject
arraymatches
intflags
Searches subject for all matches to the regular
expression given in pattern and puts them in
matches in the order specified by
flags.
After the first match is found, the subsequent searches are continued
on from end of the last match.
flags can be a combination of the following flags
(note that it doesn't make sense to use
PREG_PATTERN_ORDER together with
PREG_SET_ORDER):
PREG_PATTERN_ORDER
Orders results so that $matches[0] is an array of full
pattern matches, $matches[1] is an array of strings matched by
the first parenthesized subpattern, and so on.
]+>(.*)]+>|U",
"example: this is a test
",
$out, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
print $out[0][0].", ".$out[0][1]."\n";
print $out[1][0].", ".$out[1][1]."\n";
?>
]]>
This example will produce:
example: , this is a test
example: , this is a test
]]>
So, $out[0] contains array of strings that matched full pattern,
and $out[1] contains array of strings enclosed by tags.
PREG_SET_ORDER
Orders results so that $matches[0] is an array of first set
of matches, $matches[1] is an array of second set of matches,
and so on.
]+>(.*)]+>|U",
"example: this is a test
",
$out, PREG_SET_ORDER);
print $out[0][0].", ".$out[0][1]."\n";
print $out[1][0].", ".$out[1][1]."\n";
?>
]]>
This example will produce:
example: , example:
this is a test
, this is a test
]]>
In this case, $matches[0] is the first set of matches, and
$matches[0][0] has text matched by full pattern, $matches[0][1]
has text matched by first subpattern and so on. Similarly,
$matches[1] is the second set of matches, etc.
PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE
If this flag is set, for every occuring match the appendant string
offset will also be returned. Note that this changes the return
value in an array where every element is an array consisting of the
matched string at offset 0 and it's string offset
into subject at offset 1.
This flag is available since PHP 4.3.0 .
If no order flag is given, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER is
assumed.
Returns the number of full pattern matches (which might be zero),
or &false; if an error occurred.
Getting all phone numbers out of some text.
]]>
Find matching HTML tags (greedy)
bold textclick me";
preg_match_all ("/(<([\w]+)[^>]*>)(.*)(<\/\\2>)/", $html, $matches);
for ($i=0; $i< count($matches[0]); $i++) {
echo "matched: ".$matches[0][$i]."\n";
echo "part 1: ".$matches[1][$i]."\n";
echo "part 2: ".$matches[3][$i]."\n";
echo "part 3: ".$matches[4][$i]."\n\n";
}
?>
]]>
This example will produce:
bold text
part 1:
part 2: bold text
part 3:
matched: click me
part 1:
part 2: click me
part 3:
]]>
See also preg_match,
preg_replace,
and preg_split.