CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregexstringpcre
Boris D. Teoharov
Boris D. Teoharov

Reputation: 2388

pcre regex to match first two words, numbers

I need a regular expression to match only the first two words (they may contain letters , numbers, commas and other punctuation but not white spaces, tabs or new lines) in a string. My solution is ([^\s]+\s+){2} but if it matches something like :'123 word' *in '123 word, hello'*, it doesnt work on a string with just two words and no spaces after.

What is the right regex for this task?

Upvotes: 6

Views: 11737

Answers (3)

Vyktor
Vyktor

Reputation: 20997

You have it almost right:

(\S+\s+\S+)

Assuming you don't need stronger control on what characters to use.

If you need to match both two words or only one word only, you may use one of those:

(\S+\s+\S|\S+)
(\S+(?:\s+\S+)?)

Upvotes: 5

Brian
Brian

Reputation: 15706

Instead of trying to match the words, you could split the string on whitespace with preg_split().

Upvotes: 2

Martin Ender
Martin Ender

Reputation: 44259

If you really only want to allow numbers and letters [^\s] is not restrictive enough. Use this:

/[a-z0-9]+(\s+[a-z0-9]+)?/i

Upvotes: 1

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