PHP preg_match trouble

Question

I have a question about pre_match in PHP.

This is the code:

function get_ayalon($input) {
$escaped_input = rawurlencode($input); // RFC 3986!
$ayalon_result = get_URL("http://arabdictionary.huji.ac.il/Matrix.Arabdictionary/Search.aspx?RadioArabic=true&RadioRoot=false&WordString=$escaped_input&NX=903");
$array_of_results_ayalon = preg_match($ayalon_result, "/^/g");
echo "<pre>";
print_r($array_of_results_ayalon);
echo "</pre>";
die("done!");
}

• The variable $ayalon_result calls a function that returns the content of a page with cURL.
• In the returned result (of $ayalon_result) there is a ^ sign followed by a few digits, and in the bottom of the returned page there is another ^. The reason I do a preg_match is because I want to make the 79156^ in the top of the returned page, for example, and the ^ in the bottom of the returned content disappear.

The problem is that what is returned is just 0, and not an array with content. I guess it's something about the /^/g that is not right, but I don't know how to fix it.

Please help me and tell me anything you didn't understand

Thank you!

Answer 1

PHP preg_match takes the regular expression (regex) as the first argument, the variable to search for the pattern second, and an array to put the matches in third. The "^" is a regex operator indicating beginning of string, so to search for the character Caret, escape it with a backslash. And put parenthesis around the pattern to get all matches. So I think this is what you seek:

preg_match("/(\^\d+)/", $ayalon_result, $array_of_results_ayalon);

Swap what you have with this and see what you get.