Reputation: 59

This regex won't work if there are spaces

Regex is not really my thing. But i have this in my php file and have found it wont work if the string passed has any spaces. Can someone offer an amendment please.

regex:

preg_match('/^(\S+)\/\d/', $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], $matches);
$product_name = $matches[1];

the string will always be in the form of:

1productname/1.0.9 Sparkle/2

everything after the forward slash remains constant before the forward slash can change, and this is the portion i am looking for.

i have found if the first portion contains spaces like:

1 product name/1.0.9 Sparkle/2

this will break.

Upvotes: 2

Answers (4)

Erik Larsson

Reputation: 2709

How about /(.*?)/ if you only want to parse 1productname/1.0.9 Sparkle/2, you begin searching for a forward slash, then you read everyting that comes between the first forward slash and the second one.

Or ^(.*?)/ if you only want to read 1productname/1.0.9 Sparkle/2, space or not space

Upvotes: 0

Michael Krelin - hacker

Reputation: 143091

The regex specifically checks for non-space characters (\S). Since you asked no question I'll stay content with giving you this explanation.

And it makes sense too. It's pretty reasonable to expect space-separated list of something/numbers signatures in user agent string. And even though they're often also separated by semicolons, it makes no sense to treat space as a part of match.

Upvotes: 1