CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregexwordpresspreg-matchpreg-split
connorb
connorb

Reputation: 301

Regular Expressions (Specifically preg_split() PHP)

I'm listing out some dates in my PHP application which results in something like the following:

April2016May2016June2016 etc.

I'm trying to use preg_split to format them like this:

array('April 2016', 'May 2016', 'June 2016')

I used an online Regular Expression editor to determine how to detect for 4 consecutive numbers and here's how far I've gotten:

Note: I am also removing all white space - ideally this would be better if it only removed white space if there were more than 2 spaces i.e. hello world would not be altered but hello world would.

preg_split('/\d\d\d\d/g', preg_replace('!\s+!', '', $sidebar_contents));

Using the above, I get an error suggesting that the g identifier is not valid assuming because it's not preg_match_all - removing the g result in the following:

enter image description here

Thanks for any help!

Upvotes: 3

Views: 166

Answers (3)

Wiktor Stribiżew
Wiktor Stribiżew

Reputation: 626926

Here is a way to achieve what you want with 1 call to preg_match_all and using an array_map after:

preg_match_all('~(\p{L}+)(\d+)~', "April2016May2016June2016", $m);
$result = array_map(function($k, $v) { return $k . " " . $v; }, $m[1], $m[2]);
print_r($result);

See the regex demo and an IDEONE demo.

The pattern means:

  • (\p{L}+) - match and capture into Group 1 (will be accessible after matching via $m[1]) one or more letters
  • (\d+) - match and capture into Group 2 (will be accessible after matching via $m[2]) one or more digits.

With array_map, we just join the values from Group 1 and 2 with a space.

Alternative: fill out the resulting array inside a preg_replace_callback (just one pass!):

$result = array();
preg_replace_callback('~(\p{L}+)(\d+)~', function($m) use (&$result) {
    array_push($result, $m[1] . " " . $m[2]);
}, "April2016May2016June2016");
print_r($result);

See the IDEONE demo.

Upvotes: 2

Andreas Louv
Andreas Louv

Reputation: 47099

You can insert the space and then split:

<?php
$input = "April2016May2016June2016";
var_dump(preg_split('/(?<=\d)(?!\d|$)/i',
  preg_replace('/(?<!\d)(?=\d)/', ' ', $input)));
?>

Outputs:

array(3) {
  [0]=>
  string(10) "April 2016"
  [1]=>
  string(8) "May 2016"
  [2]=>
  string(9) "June 2016"
}

Upvotes: 2

Tim007
Tim007

Reputation: 2557

Try this:

$str = "April2016May2016June2016"; 
preg_match_all("/[a-z]+\\s\\d+/i", preg_replace("/([a-z]+)(\\d+)/i", "$1 $2", $str), $matches);
print_r($matches[0]);

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => April 2016
    [1] => May 2016
    [2] => June 2016
)

Upvotes: 1

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