CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregex
Phil Cross
Phil Cross

Reputation: 9302

Regular expression for matching between text

I have a file, which contains automatically generated statistical data from apache http logs.

I'm really struggling on how to match lines between 2 sections of text. This is a portion of the stat file I have:

jpg 6476 224523785 0 0
Unknown 31200 248731421 0 0
gif 197 408771 0 0
END_FILETYPES

# OS ID - Hits
BEGIN_OS 12
linuxandroid 1034
winlong 752
winxp 1320
win2008 204250
END_OS

# Browser ID - Hits
BEGIN_BROWSER 79
mnuxandroid 1034
winlong 752
winxp 1320

What I'm trying to do, is write a regex which will only search between the tags BEGIN_OS 12 and END_OS.

I want to create a PHP array that contains the OS and the hits, for example (I know the actual array won't actually be exactly like this, but as long as I have this data in it):

array(
   [0] => array(
      [0] => linuxandroid
      [1] => winlong
      [2] => winxp
      [3] => win2008
   )
   [1] => array(
      [0] => 1034
      [1] => 752
      [2] => 1320
      [3] => 204250
   )
)

I've been trying for a good couple of hours now with gskinner regex tester to test regular expressions, but regex is far from my strong point.

I would post what I've got so far, but I've tried loads, and the closest one I've got is:

^[BEGIN_OS\s12]+([a-zA-Z0-9]+)\s([0-9]+)

which is pathetically awful!

Any help would be appreciated, even if its a 'It cant be done'.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 65

Answers (2)

Brandon Buck
Brandon Buck

Reputation: 7181

You might try something like:

/BEGIN_OS 12\s(?:([\w\d]+)\s([\d]+\s))*END_OS/gm

You'll have to parse the match still for your results, You may also simplify it with something like:

/BEGIN_OS 12([\s\S]*)END_OS/gm

And then just parse the first group (the text between them) and split on '\n' then ' ' to get the parts you desire.

Edit

Regexs with comments:

/BEGIN_OS 12          // Match "BEGIN_OS 12" exactly
 \s                   // Match a whitespace character after
 (?:                  // Begin a non-capturing group
   ([\w\d]+)          // Match any word or digit character, at least 1 or more
   \s                 // Match a whitespace character
   ([\d]+\s)          // Match a digit character, at least one or more
 )*                   // End non-capturing group, repeate group 0 or more times           
 END_OS               // Match "END_OS" exactly
/gm                   // global search (g) and multiline (m)

And the simple version:

/BEGIN_OS 12          // Match "BEGIN_OS 12" exactly
  (                   // Begin group
    [\s\S]*           // Match any whitespace/non-whitespace character (works like the '.' but captures newlines
  )                   // End group
  END_OS              // Match "END_OS" exactly
/gm                   // global search (g) and multiline (m)

Secondary Edit

Your attempt:

^[BEGIN_OS\s12]+([a-zA-Z0-9]+)\s([0-9]+)

Won't give you the results you expect. If you break it apart:

^                     // Match the start of a line, without 'm' this means the beginning of the string.
[BEGIN_OS\s12]+       // This means, match a character that is any [B, E, G, I, N, _, O, S, \s, 1, 2] 
                      // where there is at least 1 or more. While this matches "BEGIN_OS 12" 
                      // it also matches any other lines that contains a combination of those 
                      // characters or just a line of whitespace thanks to \s).
([a-zA-Z0-9]+)        // This should match the part you expect, but potentially not with the previous rules in place.
\s
([0-9]+)              // This is the same as [\d]+ or \d+ but should match what you expect (again, potentially not with the first rule)

Upvotes: 1

Amal
Amal

Reputation: 76666

A regular expression may not be the best tool for this job. You can use a regex to get the required substring and then do the further processing with PHP's string manipulation functions.

$string = preg_replace('/^.*BEGIN_OS \d+\s*(.*?)\s*END_OS.*/s', '$1', $text);

foreach (explode(PHP_EOL, $string) as $line) {
    list($key, $value) = explode(' ', $line);
    $result[$key] = $value;
}

print_r($result);

Should give you the following output:

Array
(
    [linuxandroid] => 1034
    [winlong] => 752
    [winxp] => 1320
    [win2008] => 204250
)

Upvotes: 3

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