Reputation: 1672

preg_replace problems

I have a string The Incredible Hulk (2008) and use pattern

/^\([0-9]{1,4}\)$/

to remove (2008). PHP code looks like this:

$x = trim(preg_replace("/^\([0-9]{1,4}\)$/", "", "The Incredible Hulk (2008)"));

And the result is:

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

What am I doing wrong?

Upvotes: 0

Answers (5)

Reputation: 98901

$result = preg_replace('/\([\d]{4}\)$/', '', 'The Incredible Hulk (2008)');

Upvotes: 0

Reputation: 3712

Just remove the ^ sign (beginning of line).

$x = trim(preg_replace("/\([0-9]{1,4}\)$/", "", "The Incredible Hulk (2008)"));

(you might want to remove the $ sign as well (end of line))

More info about PHP meta characters in the documentation: http://www.php.net/manual/en/regexp.reference.meta.php

Upvotes: 1

Reputation: 3395

^ and $ are mark begin and end of the entire string. Remove both.

$x = trim(preg_replace("/\([0-9]{4}\)/", "", "The Incredible Hulk (2008)"));

Upvotes: 1

Reputation: 5475

Take out "^".

$x = trim(preg_replace("/\([0-9]{1,4}\)$/", "", "The Incredible Hulk (2008)"));

The (2008) is not anchored at the start of the string. "^" requires the match to start at the beginning of a line.

Upvotes: 2

Reputation: 33163

You're using the ^ character that matches start of line. Remove that and it should work.

If you also want to get rid of the whitespace before the ( the regex becomes /\s*$[0-9]{1,4}$$/

Upvotes: 4