CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregex
Kristian
Kristian

Reputation: 3461

Match a character multiple times with preg_match_all

I'm trying to find list of substrings present in another string.

Here is what i'm thinking:

preg_match_all("/foot|ball|football/", "I like football", $results);

Result:

array(
    0 => array(
        0 => "foot",
        1 => "ball"
    )
)

https://regexr.com/3j0db

As you can see, it matches foot and ball but not football

I've tried different flags, php options and ordering of the regex retring with no luck.

I'm unable to get them all to match.

What i figured out that on single character can only be matched once. It is able to search "bacwards", eg if i change the regex to /ball|foot|football/ moving the ball before foot, both will get matched but football will not.

Also i've tried this with PCRE (php) and Javascript - same results.

Can i get them all to match?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 118

Answers (1)

T. AKROUT
T. AKROUT

Reputation: 1717

To match all results, you can use this code:

$allMatches = [];
$words = ['foot', 'ball', 'football'];

foreach ($words as $word) {
    if (preg_match("/$word/", 'I like football', $result)) {
        $allMatches = array_merge($allMatches, $result);
    }
}

print_r($allMatches);

This problem due to the existance of foot and ball in football, so you should test every word separately.

Upvotes: 1

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