CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregex
silkfire
silkfire

Reputation: 25945

preg_match - get match with just one statement

I am wondering if it's possible to get a regex match in PHP by only using one statement? This question is more of a challenge to see if this is possible.

Right now you have to do something like this:

preg_match('#(\d+)$#', $subject, $match);
echo $match[1];

How do I access $match with one statement, instead of two?

I don't want to use preg_replace.

If it's possible with a closure, the better. I love fancy code.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 451

Answers (1)

gitaarik
gitaarik

Reputation: 46300

I don't think it's possbile. the third argument $matches is always an array. From the PHP docs:

If matches is provided, then it is filled with the results of search. $matches[0] will contain the text that matched the full pattern, $matches[1] will have the text that matched the first captured parenthesized subpattern, and so on.

Source: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.preg-match.php

If you have a lot of regexes that only have one group of capturing parentheses, you could make a shortcut function for your purpose:

function preg_match_one($regex, $subject) {

    if(preg_match($regex, $subject, $matches)) {
        return $matches[1];
    }
    else {
        return false;
    }

}

Upvotes: 3

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