PHP regex groups captures
SPL preg_match_all will return regex groups starting on index 1 of the $matches
variable. If you want to get only the second group you can use $matches[2]
for example.
Syntax:
$matches = array();
preg_match_all(\
'/(He)\w+ (\w+)/',
"Hello world\n Hello Sunshine",
$matches
);
var_dump($matches);
Result:
array(3) {
[0] =>
array(2) {
[0] =>
string(11) "Hello world"
[1] =>
string(14) "Hello Sunshine"
}
[1] =>
array(2) {
[0] =>
string(2) "He"
[1] =>
string(2) "He"
}
[2] =>
array(2) {
[0] =>
string(5) "world"
[1] =>
string(8) "Sunshine"
}
}
P.S. This answer is posted for the context of the question title after being directed here by a Google search. This was the information I was interested in when searching for this topic.
Assuming the tokens in your sample string never contain spaces, and are alphanumeric:
<?php
$pattern = "/([\w|\d])+/";
$string = "[abc - 123 - def - 456 - ghi - 789 - jkl]";
preg_match_all($pattern, $string, $matches);
print_r($matches[0]);
?>
Output:
Array
(
[0] => abc
[1] => 123
[2] => def
[3] => 456
[4] => ghi
[5] => 789
[6] => jkl
)
This is not the job for the regexp. Match against \[([^\]]*)\]
, then split
the first capture by the " - "
.
<?php
$str = "[abc - def - ghi - jkl]";
preg_match('/\[([^\]]*)\]/', $str, $re);
$strs = split(' - ', $re[1]);
print_r($strs);
?>