CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregexpreg-match
musecz
musecz

Reputation: 805

multiple patterns with preg_match

My situation is: I'm processing an array word by word. What I'm hoping to do and working on, is to capture a certain word. But for that I need to test two patterns or more with preg-match.

This is my code : 

function search_array($array)
{
$pattern  = '[A-Z]{1,3}[0-9]{1,3}[A-Z]{1,2}[0-9]{1,2}[A-Z]?';
$pattern2 = '[A-Z]{1,7}[0-9]{1,2}';
$patterns = array($pattern, $pattern2); 
$regex = '/(' .implode('|', $patterns) .')/i'; 
foreach ($array as $str) {
  if (preg_match ($regex, $str, $m)){
    $matches[] = $m[1];
    return $matches[0]; 
  }
 }
}

Example of array I could have :

Array ( [0] => X [1] => XXXXXXX [2] => XXX [3] => XXXX [4] => ABC01DC4 )

Array ( [0] => X [1] => XXXXXXX [2] => XXX [3] => ABCDEF4 [4] => XXXX [5] => XX )

Words I would like to catch :

-In the first array  : ABC01DC4

-In the second array : ABCDEF4

The problem is not the pattern itself, it's the syntax to use multiple pattern in the same pregmatch

Upvotes: 1

Views: 7304

Answers (1)

Sabuj Hassan
Sabuj Hassan

Reputation: 39355

Your code worked with me, and I didn't find any problem with the code or the REGEX. Furthermore, the description you provided is not enough to understand your needs.

However, I have guessed one problem after observing your code, which is, you didn't use any anchor(^...$) to perform matching the whole string. Your regex can find match for these inputs: %ABC01DC4V or ABCDEF4EE. So change this line with your code:

$regex = '/^(' .implode('|', $patterns) .')$/i'; 
          -+-                             -+-

Upvotes: 4

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