International PHP Conference Berlin 2025

preg_match_all

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

preg_match_all Führt eine vollständige Suche mit einem regulären Ausdruck durch

Beschreibung

preg_match_all(
    string $pattern,
    string $subject,
    array &$matches = null,
    int $flags = 0,
    int $offset = 0
): int|false

Durchsucht subject nach allen Übereinstimmungen mit dem in pattern angegebenen regulären Ausdruck und legt sie in der durch flags festgelegten Reihenfolge in matches ab.

Nachdem die erste Übereinstimmung gefunden wurde, wird die nachfolgende Suche jeweils am Ende der letzten Übereinstimmung fortgesetzt.

Parameter-Liste

pattern

Der Ausdruck, nach dem gesucht werden soll, als Zeichenkette.

subject

Die zu durchsuchende Zeichenkette.

matches

Ein mehrdimensionales Array mit allen gefundenen Übereinstimmungen, das den flags entsprechend sortiert ist.

flags

Kann eine Kombination folgender Flags sein (es ist zu beachten, dass es keinen Sinn hat, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER zusammen mit PREG_SET_ORDER zu verwenden):

PREG_PATTERN_ORDER

Ordnet die Ergebnisse so an, dass $matches[0] ein Array von Übereinstimmungen mit dem kompletten Suchmuster ist, $matches[1] ein Array von Zeichenketten, die auf das erste eingeklammerte Teilsuchmuster passen und so weiter.

<?php
preg_match_all
("|<[^>]+>(.*)</[^>]+>|U",
"<b>Beispiel: </b><div align=left>das ist ein Test</div>",
$ausgabe, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
echo
$ausgabe[0][0] . ", " . $ausgabe[0][1] . "\n";
echo
$ausgabe[1][0] . ", " . $ausgabe[1][1] . "\n";
?>

Das oben gezeigte Beispiel erzeugt folgende Ausgabe:

<b>Beispiel: </b>, <div align=left>das ist ein Test</div>
Beispiel: , das ist ein Test

Also enthält $ausgabe[0] ein Array von Zeichenketten, die auf das komplette Suchmuster passen und $ausgabe[1] ein Array von Zeichenketten, die sich zwischen Tags befinden.

Enthält das Suchmuster benannte Teilsuchmuster, dann enthält $matches zusätzlich Elemente mit dem Namen der Teilsuchmuster als Schlüssel.

Enthält das Suchmuster doppelt benannte Teilsuchmuster, wird nur das letzte Teilsuchmuster in $matches[NAME] gespeichert.

<?php
preg_match_all
(
'/(?J)(?<match>foo)|(?<match>bar)/',
'foo bar',
$matches,
PREG_PATTERN_ORDER
);
print_r($matches['match']);
?>

Das oben gezeigte Beispiel erzeugt folgende Ausgabe:

Array
(
    [0] =>
    [1] => bar
)

PREG_SET_ORDER

Ordnet die Ergebnisse so an, dass $matches[0] ein Array aus dem ersten Satz von Übereinstimmungen ist, $matches[1] ein Array aus dem zweiten Satz von Übereinstimmungen und so weiter.

<?php
preg_match_all
("|<[^>]+>(.*)</[^>]+>|U",
"<b>Beispiel: </b><div align=\"left\">das ist ein Test</div>",
$ausgabe, PREG_SET_ORDER);
echo
$ausgabe[0][0] . ", " . $ausgabe[0][1] . "\n";
echo
$ausgabe[1][0] . ", " . $ausgabe[1][1] . "\n";
?>

Das oben gezeigte Beispiel erzeugt folgende Ausgabe:

<b>Beispiel: </b>, Beispiel:
<div align="left">das ist ein Test</div>, das ist ein Test

PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE

Wenn dieses Flag gesetzt ist, wird mit jeder gefundenen Übereinstimmung die dazugehörige Position (in Bytes) in der Zeichenkette zurückgegeben. Zu beachten ist, dass dies den Wert von matches in ein Array von Arrays ändert, in dem jedes Element ein Array ist, das aus der übereinstimmenden Zeichenkette als Element 0 und deren Stelle in subject als Element 1 besteht.

<?php
preg_match_all
('/(foo)(bar)(baz)/', 'foobarbaz', $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
print_r($matches);
?>

Das oben gezeigte Beispiel erzeugt folgende Ausgabe:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [0] => foobarbaz
                    [1] => 0
                )

        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [0] => foo
                    [1] => 0
                )

        )

    [2] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [0] => bar
                    [1] => 3
                )

        )

    [3] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [0] => baz
                    [1] => 6
                )

        )

)

PREG_UNMATCHED_AS_NULL

Wird dieses Flag angegeben werden nicht gefundene Teilsuchmuster als null zurückgegeben; andernfalls werden sie als eine leere Zeichenkette (String) zurückgegeben.

Falls kein Flag für die Anordnung angegeben wurde, wird PREG_PATTERN_ORDER angenommen.

offset

Normalerweise beginnt die Suche am Anfang der Zeichenkette. Der optionale Parameter offset kann verwendet werden, um eine andere Stelle in Bytes anzugeben, ab der gesucht werden soll.

Hinweis:

Die Verwendung von offset entspricht nicht der Übergabe von substr($zeichenkette, $versatz) an Stelle der Zeichenkette an preg_match_all(), weil pattern Angaben wie ^, $ oder (?<=x) enthalten kann. Für Beispiele siehe preg_match().

Rückgabewerte

Gibt die Anzahl der Übereinstimmungen mit dem kompletten Suchmuster zurück (die auch Null sein kann). Bei einem Fehler wird false zurückgegeben.

Fehler/Exceptions

Wenn das übergebene Regex-Muster nicht zu einem gültigen Regex kompiliert werden kann, wird ein Fehler der Stufe E_WARNING ausgegeben.

Changelog

Version Beschreibung
7.2.0 Beim Parameter $flags wird nun die Konstante PREG_UNMATCHED_AS_NULL unterstützt.

Beispiele

Beispiel #1 Alle Telefonnummern aus einem Text holen.

<?php
preg_match_all
("/\(? (\d{3})? \)? (?(1) [\-\s] ) \d{3}-\d{4}/x",
"Wählen Sie 555-1212 oder 1-800-555-1212", $telefon);
?>

Beispiel #2 Zusammengehörende HTML-Tags finden (gierig)

<?php
// Das \\2 ist ein Beispiel für Rückreferenzierung. Es teilt pcre mit, dass
// der reguläre Ausdruck auf den für das zweite Klammerpaar gefundenen
// Ausdruck selbst, also in diesem Fall auf den für ([\w]+) gefundenen
// Ausdruck passen muss.
// Der zusätzliche Backslash wird wegen der doppelten Anführungsstriche
// benötigt.
$html = "<b>fett gedruckter Text</b><a href=howdy.html>klick mich an</a>";

preg_match_all("/(<([\w]+)[^>]*>)(.*?)(<\/\\2>)/", $html, $treffer, PREG_SET_ORDER);

foreach (
$treffer as $wert) {
echo
"gefunden: " . $wert[0] . "\n";
echo
"Teil 1: " . $wert[1] . "\n";
echo
"Teil 2: " . $wert[2] . "\n";
echo
"Teil 3: " . $wert[3] . "\n";
echo
"Teil 4: " . $wert[4] . "\n\n";
}
?>

Das oben gezeigte Beispiel erzeugt folgende Ausgabe:

gefunden: <b>fett gedruckter Text</b>
Teil 1: <b>
Teil 2: b
Teil 3: fett gedruckter Text
Teil 4: </b>

gefunden: <a href=howdy.html>klick mich an</a>
Teil 1: <a href=howdy.html>
Teil 2: a
Teil 3: klick mich an
Teil 4: </a>

Beispiel #3 Benannte Teilsuchmuster (named subpatterns)

<?php

$str
= <<<FOO
a: 1
b: 2
c: 3
FOO;

preg_match_all('/(?P<name>\w+): (?P<zahl>\d+)/', $str, $treffer);

/* Alternative */
// preg_match_all('/(?<name>\w+): (?<zahl>\d+)/', $str, $treffer);

print_r($treffer);

?>

Das oben gezeigte Beispiel erzeugt folgende Ausgabe:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => a: 1
            [1] => b: 2
            [2] => c: 3
        )

    [name] => Array
        (
            [0] => a
            [1] => b
            [2] => c
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => a
            [1] => b
            [2] => c
        )

    [zahl] => Array
        (
            [0] => 1
            [1] => 2
            [2] => 3
        )

    [2] => Array
        (
            [0] => 1
            [1] => 2
            [2] => 3
        )

)

Siehe auch

add a note

User Contributed Notes 38 notes

up
15
buuh
14 years ago
if you want to extract all {token}s from a string:

<?php
$pattern
= "/{[^}]*}/";
$subject = "{token1} foo {token2} bar";
preg_match_all($pattern, $subject, $matches);
print_r($matches);
?>

output:

Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[0] => {token1}
[1] => {token2}
)

)
up
5
harrybarrow at mail dot ru
3 years ago
preg_match_all() and other preg_*() functions doesn't work well with very long strings, at least longer that 1Mb.
In this case case function returns FALSE and $matchers value is unpredictable, may contain some values, may be empty.
In this case workaround is pre-split long string onto parts, for instance explode() long string by some criteria and then apply preg_match_all() on each part.
Typical scenario for this case is log analysis by regular expressions.
Tested on PHP 7.2.0
up
11
mnc at u dot nu
18 years ago
PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE always seems to provide byte offsets, rather than character position offsets, even when you are using the unicode /u modifier.
up
9
stas kuryan aka stafox
9 years ago
Here is a awesome online regex editor https://regex101.com/
which helps you test your regular expressions (prce, js, python) with real-time highlighting of regex match on data input.
up
11
Daniel Klein
9 years ago
The code that john at mccarthy dot net posted is not necessary. If you want your results grouped by individual match simply use:

<?
preg_match_all($pattern, $string, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER);
?>

E.g.

<?
preg_match_all('/([GH])([12])([!?])/', 'G1? H2!', $matches); // Default PREG_PATTERN_ORDER
// $matches = array(0 => array(0 => 'G1?', 1 => 'H2!'),
// 1 => array(0 => 'G', 1 => 'H'),
// 2 => array(0 => '1', 1 => '2'),
// 3 => array(0 => '?', 1 => '!'))

preg_match_all('/([GH])([12])([!?])/', 'G1? H2!', $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER);
// $matches = array(0 => array(0 => 'G1?', 1 => 'G', 2 => '1', 3 => '?'),
// 1 => array(0 => 'H2!', 1 => 'H', 2 => '2', 3 => '!'))
?>
up
7
fab
12 years ago
Here is a function that replaces all occurrences of a number in a string by the number--

<?php
function decremente_chaine($chaine)
{
//récupérer toutes les occurrences de nombres et leurs indices
preg_match_all("/[0-9]+/",$chaine,$out,PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
//parcourir les occurrences
for($i=0;$i<sizeof($out[0]);$i++)
{
$longueurnombre = strlen((string)$out[0][$i][0]);
$taillechaine = strlen($chaine);
// découper la chaine en 3 morceaux
$debut = substr($chaine,0,$out[0][$i][1]);
$milieu = ($out[0][$i][0])-1;
$fin = substr($chaine,$out[0][$i][1]+$longueurnombre,$taillechaine);
// si c'est 10,100,1000 etc. on décale tout de 1 car le résultat comporte un chiffre de moins
if(preg_match('#[1][0]+$#', $out[0][$i][0]))
{
for(
$j = $i+1;$j<sizeof($out[0]);$j++)
{
$out[0][$j][1] = $out[0][$j][1] -1;
}
}
$chaine = $debut.$milieu.$fin;
}
return
$chaine;
}
?>
up
5
bruha
16 years ago
To count str_length in UTF-8 string i use

$count = preg_match_all("/[[:print:]\pL]/u", $str, $pockets);

where
[:print:] - printing characters, including space
\pL - UTF-8 Letter
/u - UTF-8 string
other unicode character properties on http://www.pcre.org/pcre.txt
up
7
phpnet at sinful-music dot com
18 years ago
Here's some fleecy code to 1. validate RCF2822 conformity of address lists and 2. to extract the address specification (the part commonly known as 'email'). I wouldn't suggest using it for input form email checking, but it might be just what you want for other email applications. I know it can be optimized further, but that part I'll leave up to you nutcrackers. The total length of the resulting Regex is about 30000 bytes. That because it accepts comments. You can remove that by setting $cfws to $fws and it shrinks to about 6000 bytes. Conformity checking is absolutely and strictly referring to RFC2822. Have fun and email me if you have any enhancements!

<?php
function mime_extract_rfc2822_address($string)
{
//rfc2822 token setup
$crlf = "(?:\r\n)";
$wsp = "[\t ]";
$text = "[\\x01-\\x09\\x0B\\x0C\\x0E-\\x7F]";
$quoted_pair = "(?:\\\\$text)";
$fws = "(?:(?:$wsp*$crlf)?$wsp+)";
$ctext = "[\\x01-\\x08\\x0B\\x0C\\x0E-\\x1F" .
"!-'*-[\\]-\\x7F]";
$comment = "(\\((?:$fws?(?:$ctext|$quoted_pair|(?1)))*" .
"$fws?\\))";
$cfws = "(?:(?:$fws?$comment)*(?:(?:$fws?$comment)|$fws))";
//$cfws = $fws; //an alternative to comments
$atext = "[!#-'*+\\-\\/0-9=?A-Z\\^-~]";
$atom = "(?:$cfws?$atext+$cfws?)";
$dot_atom_text = "(?:$atext+(?:\\.$atext+)*)";
$dot_atom = "(?:$cfws?$dot_atom_text$cfws?)";
$qtext = "[\\x01-\\x08\\x0B\\x0C\\x0E-\\x1F!#-[\\]-\\x7F]";
$qcontent = "(?:$qtext|$quoted_pair)";
$quoted_string = "(?:$cfws?\"(?:$fws?$qcontent)*$fws?\"$cfws?)";
$dtext = "[\\x01-\\x08\\x0B\\x0C\\x0E-\\x1F!-Z\\^-\\x7F]";
$dcontent = "(?:$dtext|$quoted_pair)";
$domain_literal = "(?:$cfws?\\[(?:$fws?$dcontent)*$fws?]$cfws?)";
$domain = "(?:$dot_atom|$domain_literal)";
$local_part = "(?:$dot_atom|$quoted_string)";
$addr_spec = "($local_part@$domain)";
$display_name = "(?:(?:$atom|$quoted_string)+)";
$angle_addr = "(?:$cfws?<$addr_spec>$cfws?)";
$name_addr = "(?:$display_name?$angle_addr)";
$mailbox = "(?:$name_addr|$addr_spec)";
$mailbox_list = "(?:(?:(?:(?<=:)|,)$mailbox)+)";
$group = "(?:$display_name:(?:$mailbox_list|$cfws)?;$cfws?)";
$address = "(?:$mailbox|$group)";
$address_list = "(?:(?:^|,)$address)+";

//output length of string (just so you see how f**king long it is)
echo(strlen($address_list) . " ");

//apply expression
preg_match_all("/^$address_list$/", $string, $array, PREG_SET_ORDER);

return
$array;
};
?>
up
5
chuckie
18 years ago
This is a function to convert byte offsets into (UTF-8) character offsets (this is reagardless of whether you use /u modifier:

<?php

function mb_preg_match_all($ps_pattern, $ps_subject, &$pa_matches, $pn_flags = PREG_PATTERN_ORDER, $pn_offset = 0, $ps_encoding = NULL) {
// WARNING! - All this function does is to correct offsets, nothing else:
//
if (is_null($ps_encoding))
$ps_encoding = mb_internal_encoding();

$pn_offset = strlen(mb_substr($ps_subject, 0, $pn_offset, $ps_encoding));
$ret = preg_match_all($ps_pattern, $ps_subject, $pa_matches, $pn_flags, $pn_offset);

if (
$ret && ($pn_flags & PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE))
foreach(
$pa_matches as &$ha_match)
foreach(
$ha_match as &$ha_match)
$ha_match[1] = mb_strlen(substr($ps_subject, 0, $ha_match[1]), $ps_encoding);
//
// (code is independent of PREG_PATTER_ORDER / PREG_SET_ORDER)

return $ret;
}

?>
up
2
spambegone at cratemedia dot com
16 years ago
I found simpleXML to be useful only in cases where the XML was extremely small, otherwise the server would run out of memory (I suspect there is a memory leak or something?). So while searching for alternative parsers, I decided to try a simpler approach. I don't know how this compares with cpu usage, but I know it works with large XML structures. This is more a manual method, but it works for me since I always know what structure of data I will be receiving.

Essentially I just preg_match() unique nodes to find the values I am looking for, or I preg_match_all to find multiple nodes. This puts the results in an array and I can then process this data as I please.

I was unhappy though, that preg_match_all() stores the data twice (requiring twice the memory), one array for all the full pattern matches, and one array for all the sub pattern matches. You could probably write your own function that overcame this. But for now this works for me, and I hope it saves someone else some time as well.

// SAMPLE XML
<RETS ReplyCode="0" ReplyText="Operation Successful">
<COUNT Records="14" />
<DELIMITER value="09" />
<COLUMNS>PropertyID</COLUMNS>
<DATA>521897</DATA>
<DATA>677208</DATA>
<DATA>686037</DATA>
</RETS>

<?PHP

// SAMPLE FUNCTION
function parse_xml($xml) {


// GET DELIMITER (single instance)
$match_res = preg_match('/<DELIMITER value ?= ?"(.*)" ?\/>/', $xml, $matches);
if(!empty(
$matches[1])) {
$results["delimiter"] = chr($matches[1]);
} else {
// DEFAULT DELIMITER
$results["delimiter"] = "\t";
}
unset(
$match_res, $matches);


// GET MULTIPLE DATA NODES (multiple instances)
$results["data_count"] = preg_match_all("/<DATA>(.*)<\/DATA>/", $xml, $matches);
// GET MATCHES OF SUB PATTERN, DISCARD THE REST
$results["data"]=$matches[1];
unset(
$match_res, $matches);

// UNSET XML TO SAVE MEMORY (should unset outside the function as well)
unset($xml);

// RETURN RESULTS ARRAY
return $results;


}

?>
up
3
meaneye at mail dot com
16 years ago
Recently I had to write search engine in hebrew and ran into huge amount of problems. My data was stored in MySQL table with utf8_bin encoding.

So, to be able to write hebrew in utf8 table you need to do
<?php
$prepared_text
= addslashes(urf8_encode($text));
?>

But then I had to find if some word exists in stored text. This is the place I got stuck. Simple preg_match would not find text since hebrew doesnt work that easy. I've tried with /u and who kows what else.

Solution was somewhat logical and simple...
<?php
$db_text
= bin2hex(stripslashes(utf8_decode($db_text)));
$word = bin2hex($word);

$found = preg_match_all("/($word)+/i", $db_text, $matches);
?>

I've used preg_match_all since it returns number of occurences. So I could sort search results acording to that.

Hope someone finds this useful!
up
4
john at mccarthy dot net
13 years ago
I needed a function to rotate the results of a preg_match_all query, and made this. Not sure if it exists.

<?php
function turn_array($m)
{
for (
$z = 0;$z < count($m);$z++)
{
for (
$x = 0;$x < count($m[$z]);$x++)
{
$rt[$x][$z] = $m[$z][$x];
}
}

return
$rt;
}
?>

Example - Take results of some preg_match_all query:

Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[1] => Banff
[2] => Canmore
[3] => Invermere
)

[1] => Array
(
[1] => AB
[2] => AB
[3] => BC
)

[2] => Array
(
[1] => 51.1746254
[2] => 51.0938416
[3] => 50.5065193
)

[3] => Array
(
[1] => -115.5719757
[2] => -115.3517761
[3] => -116.0321884
)

[4] => Array
(
[1] => T1L 1B3
[2] => T1W 1N2
[3] => V0B 2G0
)

)

Rotate it 90 degrees to group results as records:

Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[1] => Banff
[2] => AB
[3] => 51.1746254
[4] => -115.5719757
[5] => T1L 1B3
)

[1] => Array
(
[1] => Canmore
[2] => AB
[3] => 51.0938416
[4] => -115.3517761
[5] => T1W 1N2
)

[2] => Array
(
[1] => Invermere
[2] => BC
[3] => 50.5065193
[4] => -116.0321884
[5] => V0B 2G0
)
)
up
2
stamster at gmail dot com
8 years ago
Be careful with this pattern match and large input buffer on preg_match_* functions.

<?php
$pattern
= '/\{(?:[^{}]|(?R))*\}/';

preg_match_all($pattern, $buffer, $matches);
?>

if $buffer is 80+ KB in size, you'll end up with segfault!

[89396.588854] php[4384]: segfault at 7ffd6e2bdeb0 ip 00007fa20c8d67ed sp 00007ffd6e2bde70 error 6 in libpcre.so.3.13.1[7fa20c8c3000+3c000]

This is due to the PCRE recursion. This is a known bug in PHP since 2008, but it's source is not PHP itself but PCRE library.

Rasmus Lerdorf has the answer: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=45735#1365812629

"The problem here is that there is no way to detect run-away regular expressions
here without huge performance and memory penalties. Yes, we could build PCRE in a
way that it wouldn't segfault and we could crank up the default backtrack limit
to something huge, but it would slow every regex call down by a lot. If PCRE
provided a way to handle this in a more graceful manner without the performance
hit we would of course use it."
up
2
ad
15 years ago
i have made up a simple function to extract a number from a string..

I am not sure how good it is, but it works.

It gets only the numbers 0-9, the "-", " ", "(", ")", "."

characters.. This is as far as I know the most widely used characters for a Phone number.

<?php
function clean_phone_number($phone) {
if (!empty(
$phone)) {
//var_dump($phone);
preg_match_all('/[0-9\(\)+.\- ]/s', $phone, $cleaned);
foreach(
$cleaned[0] as $k=>$v) {
$ready .= $v;
}
var_dump($ready);
die;
if (
mb_strlen($cleaned) > 4 && mb_strlen($cleaned) <=25) {
return
$cleaned;
}
else {
return
false;
}
}
return
false;
}
?>
up
1
marc
12 years ago
Better use preg_replace to convert text in a clickable link with tag <a>

$html = preg_replace('"\b(http://\S+)"', '<a href="$1">$1</a>', $text);
up
1
no at bo dot dy
14 years ago
For parsing queries with entities use:

<?php
preg_match_all
("/(?:^|(?<=\&(?![a-z]+\;)))([^\=]+)=(.*?)(?:$|\&(?![a-z]+\;))/i",
$s, $m, PREG_SET_ORDER );
?>
up
1
sledge NOSPAM
16 years ago
Perhaps you want to find the positions of all anchor tags. This will return a two dimensional array of which the starting and ending positions will be returned.

<?php
function getTagPositions($strBody)
{
define(DEBUG, false);
define(DEBUG_FILE_PREFIX, "/tmp/findlinks_");

preg_match_all("/<[^>]+>(.*)<\/[^>]+>/U", $strBody, $strTag, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
$intOffset = 0;
$intIndex = 0;
$intTagPositions = array();

foreach(
$strTag[0] as $strFullTag) {
if(
DEBUG == true) {
$fhDebug = fopen(DEBUG_FILE_PREFIX.time(), "a");
fwrite($fhDebug, $fulltag."\n");
fwrite($fhDebug, "Starting position: ".strpos($strBody, $strFullTag, $intOffset)."\n");
fwrite($fhDebug, "Ending position: ".(strpos($strBody, $strFullTag, $intOffset) + strlen($strFullTag))."\n");
fwrite($fhDebug, "Length: ".strlen($strFullTag)."\n\n");
fclose($fhDebug);
}
$intTagPositions[$intIndex] = array('start' => (strpos($strBody, $strFullTag, $intOffset)), 'end' => (strpos($strBody, $strFullTag, $intOffset) + strlen($strFullTag)));
$intOffset += strlen($strFullTag);
$intIndex++;
}
return
$intTagPositions;
}

$strBody = 'I have lots of <a href="http://my.site.com">links</a> on this <a href="http://my.site.com">page</a> that I want to <a href="http://my.site.com">find</a> the positions.';

$strBody = strip_tags(html_entity_decode($strBody), '<a>');
$intTagPositions = getTagPositions($strBody);
print_r($intTagPositions);

/*****
Output:

Array (
[0] => Array (
[start] => 15
[end] => 53 )
[1] => Array (
[start] => 62
[end] => 99 )
[2] => Array (
[start] => 115
[end] => 152 )
)
*****/
?>
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0
loretoparisi at gmail dot com
1 year ago
A multi-byte safe preg_match_all that fixes capture offsets when using PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE on utf-8 strings

<?php
function mb_preg_match_all($pattern, $subject, &$matches = null, $flags = 0, $offset = 0) {
$out=preg_match_all($pattern, $subject, $matches, $flags, $offset);
if(
$flags & PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE && is_array($matches) && count($matches)>0) {
foreach (
$matches[0] as &$match) {
$match[1] = mb_strlen(substr($subject, 0, $match[1]));
}
}
return
$out;
}
?>
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0
biziclop at vipmail dot hu
2 years ago
Sometimes you don't just want to cherry-pick the matches but need that the entire subject is made up from matching substrings, so every character of the subject is a member of a match. None of the existing preg_* function is easily applicable for this task, so I made the preg_match_entire() function.
It uses the (*MARK) syntax which is documented here: https://pcre.org/original/doc/html/pcrepattern.html#SEC27

<?php

// returns: the array of matches
// null if the string is not a repetition of the pattern
// false on error
function preg_match_entire( string $pattern, string $subject, int $flags = 0 ){
// Rebuild and wrap the pattern
$delimiter = $pattern[0];
$ldp = strrpos( $pattern, $delimiter );
$pattern = substr( $pattern, 1, $ldp - 1 );
$modifiers = substr( $pattern, $ldp + 1 );
$pattern = "{$delimiter} \G\z (*MARK:END) | \G (?:{$pattern}) {$delimiter}x{$modifiers}";
$r = preg_match_all( $pattern, $subject, $m, PREG_SET_ORDER | $flags );
if(
$r === false ) return false; // error
$end = array_pop( $m );
if(
$end === null || ! isset( $end['MARK']) || $end['MARK'] !== 'END')
return
null; // end of string not reached
return $m; // return actual matches, may be an empty array
}

// Same results:
test('#{\d+}#', ''); // []
test('#{\d+}#', '{11}{22}{33}'); // {11},{22},{33}

// Different results: preg_match_entire won't match this:
test('#{\d+}#', '{11}{}{aa}{22},{{33}}');
// preg_match_entire: null
// preg_match_all: {11},{22},{33}

function test( $pattern, $subject ){
echo
"pattern: $pattern\n";
echo
"subject: $subject\n";
print_matches('preg_match_entire: ', preg_match_entire( $pattern, $subject ));
preg_match_all( $pattern, $subject, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER );
print_matches('preg_match_all: ', $matches );
echo
"\n";
}
function
print_matches( $t, $m ){
echo
$t, is_array( $m ) && $m ? implode(',', array_column( $m, 0 )) : json_encode( $m ), "\n";
}
?>
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0
rajudec at gmail dot com
2 years ago
<?php
//Allow limited span formatting in html text

$str='<span style="text-decoration-line: underline; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">White</span>
<span style="text-decoration-line: underline;">RED</span><span style="color:blue">blue</span>'
;

function
next_format($str)
{
$array=array("text-decoration-line"=>"underline","font-weight"=>"bold","font-style"=>"italic");
foreach (
$array as $key=>$val)
{
if(
$str[1]==$key && $str[2]==$val)
{
return
$str[1].': '.$str[2].";";
}
}
return
'';

}
function
next_span($matches)
{
$needFormat=preg_replace_callback('/([a-z\-]+):\s*([^;]+)(;|)/ism',"next_format",$matches[2]);
return
$matches[1].$needFormat.$matches[3];

}
echo
preg_replace_callback(
"/(\<span\s+style\=\")([^\"]+)(\">)/ism",
"next_span",
$str);
?>
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0
mojo
3 years ago
Why <?php preg_match_all('/(?:^|\s)(ABC|XYZ)(?:\s|$)/i', 'ABC XYZ', $match) ?> finds only 'ABC'?

Because the first full match is 'ABC ' - containing the trailing space. And that space is not available for further processing.

Use lookbehind and lookahead to solve this problem: <?php preg_match_all('/(?<=^|\s)(ABC|XYZ)(?=\s|$)/i', 'ABC XYZ', $match) ?>
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0
chris at ocproducts dot com
3 years ago
If PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE is set then unmatched captures (i.e. ones with '?') will not be present in the result array. This is presumably because there is no offset, and thus the original PHP dev decided best to just leave it out.
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0
qdinar at gmail dot com
6 years ago
when regex is for longer and shorter version of a string,
only one of that long and short versions is catched.
when regex match occurs in one position of string,
only one match is saved in matches[0] for that position.
if ? is used, regex is greedy, and catches more long version,
if | is used, most first matching variant is catched:
<?php
preg_match_all
('/ab|abc/','abc',$m);
var_dump($m);
preg_match_all('/abc?/','abc',$m);
var_dump($m);
?>
['ab', 'abc'] in $m[0] for both can be expected, but it is not so,
actually they output [['ab']] and [['abc']]:
array(1) {
[0]=>
array(1) {
[0]=>
string(2) "ab"
}
}
array(1) {
[0]=>
array(1) {
[0]=>
string(3) "abc"
}
}
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-1
b3forgames at gmail dot com
1 year ago
EXAMPLE:
$file = file_get_contents('file');
if(preg_match_all('#Task To Run(.*)#s', $file, $m)) {
var_dump($m);
}

No output...

preg_match_all not work if file exist BOM bytes (FF FE) :

╰─$ head -n1 file | hexdump -C
00000000 ff fe 48 00 6f 00 73 00 74 00 4e 00 61 00 6d 00 |..H.o.s.t.N.a.m.|

clear BOM via dos2unix:

╰─$ dos2unix file
dos2unix: converting UTF-16LE file file to UTF-8 Unix format...

Check again:

╰─$ head -n1 file | hexdump -C
00000000 48 6f 73 74 4e 61 6d 65 3a 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 |HostName: |

Great! Now preg_match_all works fine.
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0
elyknosrac at gmail dot com
15 years ago
Using preg_match_all I made a pretty handy function.

<?php

function reg_smart_replace($pattern, $replacement, $subject, $replacementChar = "$$$", $limit = -1)
{
if (!
$pattern || ! $subject || ! $replacement ) { return false; }

$replacementChar = preg_quote($replacementChar);

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

if (
$limit > -1) {
foreach (
$matches as $count => $value )
{
if (
$count + 1 > $limit ) { unset($matches[$count]); }
}
}
foreach (
$matches[0] as $match) {
$rep = ereg_replace($replacementChar, $match, $replacement);
$subject = ereg_replace($match, $rep, $subject);
}

return
$subject;
}
?>

This function can turn blocks of text into clickable links or whatever. Example:

<?php
reg_smart_replace
(EMAIL_REGEX, '<a href="mailto:$$$">$$$</a>', $description)
?>
will turn all email addresses into actual links.

Just substitute $$$ with the text that will be found by the regex. If you can't use $$$ then use the 4th parameter $replacementChar
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0
MonkeyMan
16 years ago
Here is a way to match everything on the page, performing an action for each match as you go. I had used this idiom in other languages, where its use is customary, but in PHP it seems to be not quite as common.

<?php
function custom_preg_match_all($pattern, $subject)
{
$offset = 0;
$match_count = 0;
while(
preg_match($pattern, $subject, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE, $offset))
{
// Increment counter
$match_count++;

// Get byte offset and byte length (assuming single byte encoded)
$match_start = $matches[0][1];
$match_length = strlen(matches[0][0]);

// (Optional) Transform $matches to the format it is usually set as (without PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE set)
foreach($matches as $k => $match) $newmatches[$k] = $match[0];
$matches = $new_matches;

// Your code here
echo "Match number $match_count, at byte offset $match_start, $match_length bytes long: ".$matches[0]."\r\n";

// Update offset to the end of the match
$offset = $match_start + $match_length;
}

return
$match_count;
}
?>

Note that the offsets returned are byte values (not necessarily number of characters) so you'll have to make sure the data is single-byte encoded. (Or have a look at paolo mosna's strByte function on the strlen manual page).
I'd be interested to know how this method performs speedwise against using preg_match_all and then recursing through the results.
up
-1
matt at lvl99 dot com
9 years ago
I had been crafting and testing some regexp patterns online using the tools Regex101 and a `preg_match_all()` tester and found that the regexp patterns I wrote worked fine on them, just not in my code.

My problem was not double-escaping backslash characters:

<?php
// Input test
$input = "\"something\",\"something here\",\"some\nnew\nlines\",\"this is the end\"";

// Work with online regexp testers, doesn't work in PHP
preg_match_all( "/(?:,|^)(?<!\\)\".*?(?<!\\)\"(?:(?=,)|$)/s", $input, $matches );

/*
Outputs: NULL
*/

// Works with online regexp testers, does work in PHP
preg_match_all( "/(?:,|^)(?<!\\\\)\".*?(?<!\\\\)\"(?:(?=,)|$)/s", $input, $matches );

/*
Outputs:
array(2) {
[0]=>
array(4) {
[0]=>
string(11) ""something""
[1]=>
string(17) ","something here""
[2]=>
string(17) ","some
new
lines""
[3]=>
string(18) ","this is the end""
}
[1]=>
array(4) {
[0]=>
string(9) "something"
[1]=>
string(14) "something here"
[2]=>
string(14) "some
new
lines"
[3]=>
string(15) "this is the end"
}
}
*/
?>
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-1
phektus at gmail dot com
17 years ago
If you'd like to include DOUBLE QUOTES on a regular expression for use with preg_match_all, try ESCAPING THRICE, as in: \\\"

For example, the pattern:
'/<table>[\s\w\/<>=\\\"]*<\/table>/'

Should be able to match:
<table>
<row>
<col align="left" valign="top">a</col>
<col align="right" valign="bottom">b</col>
</row>
</table>
.. with all there is under those table tags.

I'm not really sure why this is so, but I tried just the double quote and one or even two escape characters and it won't work. In my frustration I added another one and then it's cool.
up
-1
royaltm75 at gmail dot com
15 years ago
I have received complains, that my html2a() code (see below) doesn't work in some cases.
It is however not the problem with algorithm or procedure, but with PCRE recursive stack limits.

If you use recursive PCRE (?R) you should remember to increase those two ini settings:

ini_set('pcre.backtrack_limit', 10000000);
ini_set('pcre.recursion_limit', 10000000);

But be warned: (from php.ini)

;Please note that if you set this value to a high number you may consume all
;the available process stack and eventually crash PHP (due to reaching the
;stack size limit imposed by the Operating System).

I have written this example mainly to demonstrate the power of PCRE LANGUAGE, not the power of it's implementation :)

But if you like it, use it, of course on your own risk.
up
-1
fseverin at free dot fr
12 years ago
As I intended to create for my own purpose a clean PHP class to act on XML files, combining the use of DOM and simplexml functions, I had that small problem, but very annoying, that the offsets in a path is not numbered the same in both.

That is to say, for example, if i get a DOM xpath object it appears like:
/ANODE/ANOTHERNODE/SOMENODE[9]/NODE[2]
and as a simplexml object would be equivalent to:
ANODE->ANOTHERNODE->SOMENODE[8]->NODE[1]

So u see what I mean? I used preg_match_all to solve that problem, and finally I got this after some hours of headlock (as I'm french the names of variables are in French sorry), hoping it could be useful to some of you:

<?php
function decrease_string($string)
{
/* retrieve all occurrences AND offsets of numbers in the original string: */

preg_match_all("/[0-9]+/",$chaine,$out,PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
for(
$i=0;$i<sizeof($out[0]);$i++)
{
$longueurnombre = strlen((string)$out[0][$i][0]);
$taillechaine = strlen($chaine);
// cut the string in 3 pieces
$debut = substr($chaine,0,$out[0][$i][1]);
$milieu = ($out[0][$i][0])-1;
$fin = substr($chaine,$out[0][$i][1]+$longueurnombre,$taillechaine);
/* if it's 10,100,1000, the problem is that the string gets shorter and it shifts all the offsets, so we have to decrease them of 1 */
if(preg_match('#[1][0]+$#', $out[0][$i][0]))
{
for(
$j = $i+1;$j<sizeof($out[0]);$j++)
{
$out[0][$j][1] = $out[0][$j][1] -1;
}
}
$chaine = $debut.$milieu.$fin;
}
return
$chaine;
}
?>
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-1
dolbegraeb
16 years ago
please note, that the function of "mail at SPAMBUSTER at milianw dot de" can result in invalid xhtml in some cases. think i used it in the right way but my result is sth like this:

<img src="./img.jpg" alt="nice picture" />foo foo foo foo </img>

correct me if i'm wrong.
i'll see when there's time to fix that. -.-
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-3
ajeet dot nigam at icfaitechweb dot com
10 years ago
Here http://tryphpregex.com/ is a php based online regex editor which helps you test your regular expressions with real-time highlighting of regex match on data input.
up
-1
DarkSide
10 years ago
This is very useful to combine matches:
$a = array_combine($matches[1], $matches[2]);
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-3
satyavvd at ymail dot com
13 years ago
Extract fields out of csv string : ( since before php5.3 you can't use str_getcsv function )
Here is the regex :

<?php

$csvData
= <<<EOF
10,'20',"30","'40","'50'","\"60","70,80","09\\/18,/\"2011",'a,sdfcd'
EOF

$reg = <<<EOF
/
(
(
([\'\"])
(
(
[^\'\"]
|
(\\\\.)
)*
)
(\\3)
|
(
[^,]
|
(\\\\.)
)*
),)
/x
EOF;

preg_match_all($reg,$csvData,$matches);

// to extract csv fields
print_r($matches[2]);
?>
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-2
mr davin
17 years ago
<?php
// Returns an array of strings where the start and end are found
function findinside($start, $end, $string) {
preg_match_all('/' . preg_quote($start, '/') . '([^\.)]+)'. preg_quote($end, '/').'/i', $string, $m);
return
$m[1];
}

$start = "mary has";
$end = "lambs.";
$string = "mary has 6 lambs. phil has 13 lambs. mary stole phil's lambs. now mary has all the lambs.";

$out = findinside($start, $end, $string);

print_r ($out);

/* Results in
(
[0] => 6
[1] => all the
)
*/
?>
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-2
royaltm75 at NOSPAM dot gmail dot com
15 years ago
The power of pregs is limited only by your *imagination* :)
I wrote this html2a() function using preg recursive match (?R) which provides quite safe and bulletproof html/xml extraction:
<?php
function html2a ( $html ) {
if ( !
preg_match_all( '
@
\<\s*?(\w+)((?:\b(?:\'[^\']*\'|"[^"]*"|[^\>])*)?)\>
((?:(?>[^\<]*)|(?R))*)
\<\/\s*?\\1(?:\b[^\>]*)?\>
|\<\s*(\w+)(\b(?:\'[^\']*\'|"[^"]*"|[^\>])*)?\/?\>
@uxis'
, $html = trim($html), $m, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE | PREG_SET_ORDER) )
return
$html;
$i = 0;
$ret = array();
foreach (
$m as $set) {
if (
strlen( $val = trim( substr($html, $i, $set[0][1] - $i) ) ) )
$ret[] = $val;
$val = $set[1][1] < 0
? array( 'tag' => strtolower($set[4][0]) )
: array(
'tag' => strtolower($set[1][0]), 'val' => html2a($set[3][0]) );
if (
preg_match_all( '
/(\w+)\s*(?:=\s*(?:"([^"]*)"|\'([^\']*)\'|(\w+)))?/usix
'
, isset($set[5]) && $set[2][1] < 0
? $set[5][0]
:
$set[2][0]
,
$attrs, PREG_SET_ORDER ) ) {
foreach (
$attrs as $a) {
$val['attr'][$a[1]]=$a[count($a)-1];
}
}
$ret[] = $val;
$i = $set[0][1]+strlen( $set[0][0] );
}
$l = strlen($html);
if (
$i < $l )
if (
strlen( $val = trim( substr( $html, $i, $l - $i ) ) ) )
$ret[] = $val;
return
$ret;
}
?>

Now let's try it with this example: (there are some really nasty xhtml compliant bugs, but ... we shouldn't worry)

<?php
$html
= <<<EOT
some leftover text...
< DIV class=noCompliant style = "text-align:left;" >
... and some other ...
< dIv > < empty> </ empty>
<p> This is yet another text <br >
that wasn't <b>compliant</b> too... <br />
</p>
<div class="noClass" > this one is better but we don't care anyway </div ><P>
<input type= "text" name ='my "name' value = "nothin really." readonly>
end of paragraph </p> </Div> </div> some trailing text
EOT;

$a = html2a($html);
//now we will make some neat html out of it
echo a2html($a);

function
a2html ( $a, $in = "" ) {
if (
is_array($a) ) {
$s = "";
foreach (
$a as $t)
if (
is_array($t) ) {
$attrs="";
if ( isset(
$t['attr']) )
foreach(
$t['attr'] as $k => $v )
$attrs.=" ${k}=".( strpos( $v, '"' )!==false ? "'$v'" : "\"$v\"" );
$s.= $in."<".$t['tag'].$attrs.( isset( $t['val'] ) ? ">\n".a2html( $t['val'], $in." " ).$in."</".$t['tag'] : "/" ).">\n";
} else
$s.= $in.$t."\n";
} else {
$s = empty($a) ? "" : $in.$a."\n";
}
return
$s;
}
?>
This produces:
some leftover text...
<div class="noCompliant" style="text-align:left;">
... and some other ...
<div>
<empty>
</empty>
<p>
This is yet another text
<br/>
that wasn't
<b>
compliant
</b>
too...
<br/>
</p>
<div class="noClass">
this one is better but we don't care anyway
</div>
<p>
<input type="text" name='my "name' value="nothin really." readonly="readonly"/>
end of paragraph
</p>
</div>
</div>
some trailing text
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-3
avengis at gmail dot com
15 years ago
The next function works with almost any complex xml/xhtml string

<?php
/**
* Find and close unclosed xml tags
**/
function close_tags($text) {
$patt_open = "%((?<!</)(?<=<)[\s]*[^/!>\s]+(?=>|[\s]+[^>]*[^/]>)(?!/>))%";
$patt_close = "%((?<=</)([^>]+)(?=>))%";
if (
preg_match_all($patt_open,$text,$matches))
{
$m_open = $matches[1];
if(!empty(
$m_open))
{
preg_match_all($patt_close,$text,$matches2);
$m_close = $matches2[1];
if (
count($m_open) > count($m_close))
{
$m_open = array_reverse($m_open);
foreach (
$m_close as $tag) $c_tags[$tag]++;
foreach (
$m_open as $k => $tag) if ($c_tags[$tag]--<=0) $text.='</'.$tag.'>';
}
}
}
return
$text;
}
?>
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-3
vojjov dot artem at ya dot ru
9 years ago
// Here is function that allows you to preg_match_all array of patters

function getMatches($pattern, $subject) {
$matches = array();

if (is_array($pattern)) {
foreach ($pattern as $p) {
$m = getMatches($p, $subject);

foreach ($m as $key => $match) {
if (isset($matches[$key])) {
$matches[$key] = array_merge($matches[$key], $m[$key]);
} else {
$matches[$key] = $m[$key];
}
}
}
} else {
preg_match_all($pattern, $subject, $matches);
}

return $matches;
}

$patterns = array(
'/<span>(.*?)<\/span>/',
'/<a href=".*?">(.*?)<\/a>/'
);

$html = '<span>some text</span>';
$html .= '<span>some text in another span</span>';
$html .= '<a href="path/">here is the link</a>';
$html .= '<address>address is here</address>';
$html .= '<span>here is one more span</span>';

$matches = getMatches($patterns, $html);

print_r($matches); // result is below

/*
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[0] => <span>some text</span>
[1] => <span>some text in another span</span>
[2] => <span>here is one more span</span>
[3] => <a href="path/">here is the link</a>
)

[1] => Array
(
[0] => some text
[1] => some text in another span
[2] => here is one more span
[3] => here is the link
)

)
*/
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