CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregexmatch
sleepless_in_seattle
sleepless_in_seattle

Reputation: 2214

Matching two things with string in between

I have made a syntax of my own and it works fine for things like this:

$str = "abc {{for items}} efg";
preg_match('/(?<={{for )[^}]*(?=}})/', $str, $match);

// Returns: [0] => items

But I want to expand the for command to work like this:

$str = "abc {{for item in items}} efg";

How do I need to modify the regexp to match the "item" and "items" and exclude the "for" and "in" parts?

I am aware that I could do it like this:

preg_match('/{{for (.*) in (.*)}}/', $str, $match);

But I like my original regexp because it only returns the matched parts so I would like to have some help modifying it to support this example.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: It's not always {{for item in items}} it might aswell be {{for piece in products}} or {{for part in junk}}

Upvotes: 0

Views: 43

Answers (1)

Avinash Raj
Avinash Raj

Reputation: 174696

I assume that your input formats are exactly like above.

{{for\s+\K[^\s}]+(?=\s+in\s+[^\s}]+}})|[^\s}]+(?=}})

\K keeps the text matched so far out of the overall regex match. (?=...) called positive lookahead assertion.

DEMO

Upvotes: 1

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