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preg_quote> <preg_match_all
Last updated: Fri, 13 Nov 2009

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preg_match

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

preg_matchPerform a regular expression match

Descrição

int preg_match ( string $pattern , string $subject [, array &$matches [, int $flags [, int $offset ]]] )

Searches subject for a match to the regular expression given in pattern .

Parâmetros

pattern

The pattern to search for, as a string.

subject

The input string.

matches

If matches is provided, then it is filled with the results of search. $matches[0] will contain the text that matched the full pattern, $matches[1] will have the text that matched the first captured parenthesized subpattern, and so on.

flags

flags can be the following flag:

PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE
If this flag is passed, for every occurring match the appendant string offset will also be returned. Note that this changes the value of matches into an array where every element is an array consisting of the matched string at offset 0 and its string offset into subject at offset 1.

offset

Normally, the search starts from the beginning of the subject string. The optional parameter offset can be used to specify the alternate place from which to start the search (in bytes).

Nota: Using offset is not equivalent to passing substr($subject, $offset) to preg_match() in place of the subject string, because pattern can contain assertions such as ^, $ or (?<=x). Compare:

<?php
$subject 
"abcdef";
$pattern '/^def/';
preg_match($pattern$subject$matchesPREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE3);
print_r($matches);
?>

O exemplo acima irá imprimir:

Array
(
)

while this example

<?php
$subject 
"abcdef";
$pattern '/^def/';
preg_match($patternsubstr($subject,3), $matchesPREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
print_r($matches);
?>

will produce

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => def
            [1] => 0
        )

)


Valor Retornado

preg_match() returns the number of times pattern matches. That will be either 0 times (no match) or 1 time because preg_match() will stop searching after the first match. preg_match_all() on the contrary will continue until it reaches the end of subject . preg_match() returns FALSE if an error occurred.

Histórico

Versão Descrição
5.2.2 Named subpatterns now accept the syntax (?<name>) and (?'name') as well as (?P<name>). Previous versions accepted only (?P<name>).
4.3.3 The offset parameter was added
4.3.0 The PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE flag was added
4.3.0 The flags parameter was added

Exemplos

Exemplo #1 Find the string of text "php"

<?php
// The "i" after the pattern delimiter indicates a case-insensitive search
if (preg_match("/php/i""PHP is the web scripting language of choice.")) {
    echo 
"A match was found.";
} else {
    echo 
"A match was not found.";
}
?>

Exemplo #2 Find the word "web"

<?php
/* The \b in the pattern indicates a word boundary, so only the distinct
 * word "web" is matched, and not a word partial like "webbing" or "cobweb" */
if (preg_match("/\bweb\b/i""PHP is the web scripting language of choice.")) {
    echo 
"A match was found.";
} else {
    echo 
"A match was not found.";
}

if (
preg_match("/\bweb\b/i""PHP is the website scripting language of choice.")) {
    echo 
"A match was found.";
} else {
    echo 
"A match was not found.";
}
?>

Exemplo #3 Getting the domain name out of a URL

<?php
// get host name from URL
preg_match('@^(?:http://)?([^/]+)@i',
    
"http://www.php.net/index.html"$matches);
$host $matches[1];

// get last two segments of host name
preg_match('/[^.]+\.[^.]+$/'$host$matches);
echo 
"domain name is: {$matches[0]}\n";
?>

O exemplo acima irá imprimir:

domain name is: php.net

Exemplo #4 Using named subpattern

<?php

$str 
'foobar: 2008';

// Works in PHP 5.2.2 and later.
preg_match('/(?<name>\w+): (?<digit>\d+)/'$str$matches);

// Before PHP 5.2.2, use this:
// preg_match('/(?P<name>\w+): (?P<digit>\d+)/', $str, $matches);

print_r($matches);

?>

O exemplo acima irá imprimir:

Array
(
    [0] => foobar: 2008
    [name] => foobar
    [1] => foobar
    [digit] => 2008
    [2] => 2008
)

Notas

Dica

Do not use preg_match() if you only want to check if one string is contained in another string. Use strpos() or strstr() instead as they will be faster.

Veja Também



preg_quote> <preg_match_all
Last updated: Fri, 13 Nov 2009
 
add a note add a note User Contributed Notes
preg_match
Stefan
17-Nov-2009 10:47
I spent a while replacing all my ereg() calls to preg_match(), since ereg() is now deprecated and will not be supported as of v 6.0.

Just a warning regarding the conversion, the two functions behave very similarly, but not exactly alike. Obviously, you will need to delimit your pattern with '/' or '|' characters.

The difference that stumped me was that preg_replace overwrites the $matches array regardless if a match was found. If no match was found, $matches is simply empty.

ereg(), however, would leave $matches alone if a match was not found. In my code, I had repeated calls to ereg, and was populating $matches with each match. I was only interested in the last match. However, with preg_match, if the very last call to the function did not result in a match, the $matches array would be overwritten with a blank value.

Here is an example code snippet to illustrate:

<?php
$test
= array('yes','no','yes','no','yes','no');

foreach (
$test as $key=>$value) {
 
ereg("yes",$value,$matches1);
 
preg_match("|yes|",$value,$matches2);
}
  print
"ereg result: $matches1[0]<br>";
  print
"preg_match result: $matches2[0]<br>";
?>

The output is:
ereg result: yes
preg_match result:

($matches2[0] in this case is empty)

I believe the preg_match behavior is cleaner. I just thought I would report this to hopefully save others some time.
ruakuu at NOSPAM dot com
04-Nov-2009 05:32
Was working on a site that needed japanese and alphabetic letters and needed to
validate input using preg_match, I tried using \p{script} but didn't work:

<?php
$pattern
='/^([-a-zA-Z0-9_\p{Katakana}\p{Hiragana}\p{Han}]*)$/u'; // Didn't work
?>

So I tried with ranges and it worked:

<?php
$pattern
='/^[-a-zA-Z0-9_\x{30A0}-\x{30FF}'
        
.'\x{3040}-\x{309F}\x{4E00}-\x{9FBF}\s]*$/u';
$match_string = '印刷最安 ニキビ跡除去 ゲームボーイ';

if (
preg_match($pattern, $match_string)) {
    echo
"Found - pattern $pattern";
} else {
    echo
"Not found - pattern $pattern";
}
?>

U+4E00–U+9FBF Kanji
U+3040–U+309F Hiragana
U+30A0–U+30FF Katakana

Hope its useful, it took me several hours to figure it out.
splattermania at freenet dot de
21-Oct-2009 03:50
Addition to my last note:

I just posted the regex, but there are missing the delimiters for it. The correct way to check against the regex ist as follows:

<?
   
if(preg_match("/^$regex$/", $url))
    {
        return
true;
    }
?>
Anonymous
12-Oct-2009 09:24
If your regular expression does not match with long input text when you think it should, you might have hit the PCRE backtrack default limit of 100000. See http://php.net/pcre.backtrack-limit.
splattermania at freenet dot de
01-Oct-2009 12:01
As I wasted lots of time finding a REAL regex for URLs and resulted in building it on my own, I now have found one, that seems to work for all kinds of urls:

<?php
    $regex
= "((https?|ftp)\:\/\/)?"; // SCHEME
   
$regex .= "([a-z0-9+!*(),;?&=\$_.-]+(\:[a-z0-9+!*(),;?&=\$_.-]+)?@)?"; // User and Pass
   
$regex .= "([a-z0-9-.]*)\.([a-z]{2,3})"; // Host or IP
   
$regex .= "(\:[0-9]{2,5})?"; // Port
   
$regex .= "(\/([a-z0-9+\$_-]\.?)+)*\/?"; // Path
   
$regex .= "(\?[a-z+&\$_.-][a-z0-9;:@&%=+\/\$_.-]*)?"; // GET Query
   
$regex .= "(#[a-z_.-][a-z0-9+\$_.-]*)?"; // Anchor
?>

Then, the correct way to check against the regex ist as follows:

<?php
      
if(preg_match("/^$regex$/", $url))
       {
               return
true;
       }
?>
luc _ santeramo at t yahoo dot com
03-Sep-2009 02:46
If you want to validate an email in one line, use filter_var() function !
http://fr.php.net/manual/en/function.filter-var.php

easy use, as described in the document example :
var_dump(filter_var('bob@example.com', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL));
marcosc at tekar dot net
27-Aug-2009 04:31
When using accented characters and "ñ" (áéíóúñ), preg_match does not work. It is a charset problem, use utf8_decode/decode to fix.
ian_channing at hotmail dot com
20-Aug-2009 01:13
This is a function that uses regular expressions to match against the various VAT formats required across the EU.

<?php
/**
 * @param integer $country Country name
 * @param integer $vat_number VAT number to test e.g. GB123 4567 89
 * @return integer -1 if country not included OR 1 if the VAT Num matches for the country OR 0 if no match
*/
function checkVatNumber( $country, $vat_number ) {
    switch(
$country) {
        case
'Austria':
           
$regex = '/^(AT){0,1}U[0-9]{8}$/i';
            break;
        case
'Belgium':
           
$regex = '/^(BE){0,1}[0]{0,1}[0-9]{9}$/i';
            break;
        case
'Bulgaria':
           
$regex = '/^(BG){0,1}[0-9]{9,10}$/i';
            break;
        case
'Cyprus':
           
$regex = '/^(CY){0,1}[0-9]{8}[A-Z]$/i';
            break;
        case
'Czech Republic':
           
$regex = '/^(CZ){0,1}[0-9]{8,10}$/i';
            break;
        case
'Denmark':
           
$regex = '/^(DK){0,1}([0-9]{2}[\ ]{0,1}){3}[0-9]{2}$/i';
            break;
        case
'Estonia':
        case
'Germany':
        case
'Greece':
        case
'Portugal':
           
$regex = '/^(EE|EL|DE|PT){0,1}[0-9]{9}$/i';
            break;
        case
'France':
           
$regex = '/^(FR){0,1}[0-9A-Z]{2}[\ ]{0,1}[0-9]{9}$/i';
            break;
        case
'Finland':
        case
'Hungary':
        case
'Luxembourg':
        case
'Malta':
        case
'Slovenia':
           
$regex = '/^(FI|HU|LU|MT|SI){0,1}[0-9]{8}$/i';
            break;
        case
'Ireland':
           
$regex = '/^(IE){0,1}[0-9][0-9A-Z\+\*][0-9]{5}[A-Z]$/i';
            break;
        case
'Italy':
        case
'Latvia':
           
$regex = '/^(IT|LV){0,1}[0-9]{11}$/i';
            break;
        case
'Lithuania':
           
$regex = '/^(LT){0,1}([0-9]{9}|[0-9]{12})$/i';
            break;
        case
'Netherlands':
           
$regex = '/^(NL){0,1}[0-9]{9}B[0-9]{2}$/i';
            break;
        case
'Poland':
        case
'Slovakia':
           
$regex = '/^(PL|SK){0,1}[0-9]{10}$/i';
            break;
        case
'Romania':
           
$regex = '/^(RO){0,1}[0-9]{2,10}$/i';
            break;
        case
'Sweden':
           
$regex = '/^(SE){0,1}[0-9]{12}$/i';
            break;
        case
'Spain':
           
$regex = '/^(ES){0,1}([0-9A-Z][0-9]{7}[A-Z])|([A-Z][0-9]{7}[0-9A-Z])$/i';
            break;
        case
'United Kingdom':
           
$regex = '/^(GB){0,1}([1-9][0-9]{2}[\ ]{0,1}[0-9]{4}[\ ]{0,1}[0-9]{2})|([1-9][0-9]{2}[\ ]{0,1}[0-9]{4}[\ ]{0,1}[0-9]{2}[\ ]{0,1}[0-9]{3})|((GD|HA)[0-9]{3})$/i';
            break;
        default:
            return -
1;
            break;
    }
   
    return
preg_match($regex, $vat_number);
}
?>
Rob
19-Aug-2009 07:03
The following function works well for validating ip addresses

<?php
function valid_ip($ip) {
    return
preg_match("/^([1-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])" .
           
"(\.([0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3}$/", $ip);
}
?>
KOmaSHOOTER at gmx dot de
09-Aug-2009 01:12
reading files from a dir without "." or ".."
<?php
$handle
= opendir('content/pages/');
$pages = array();
while (
false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
     
$case=preg_match("/^[.]/",$file,$out, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
     
//echo($case);
     
if(!$case){
       echo(
"$file<br />");
      
array_push($pages,$file);
       }
}
echo(
count($pages));
?>
suit dot 2009 at rebell dot at
06-Aug-2009 10:49
Reno's expression is still wrong.

The domain-part may contain lots of characters for IDN. IP adresses in the domain part are allowed. In local-part are more characters allowed too but specific combinations are forbidden. Check RFC 2822 and RFC 2821.

"foo bar"@example.com is valid
foo\@bar@example.com is valid
$?^_`.!#{|}%&'*+-/=~@example.com is also valid e-mail-address (ok, quite uncommon example)

but

foo.@example.com is invalid, dot at beginning and end of the string is not allowed - but Reno's expression would match.

an e-mail adress should not be longer than 256 characters (or 64 in local part, 255 in domain part) since its limited by SMTP - check RFC 5321

Of course you should check RFC 2606 (Section 3) too - domain.tld or host.tld are not good as example-domains. Use example.com / org / net (for domains) or .invalid / . example (for top level domains).
david at blue-labs dot org
18-May-2009 01:06
Reno, your email validation regex is still invalid.  Email addresses can contain the "+" in the localpart.

i.e. david+something@domain.com
matt
08-May-2009 08:07
To support large Unicode ranges (ie: [\x{E000}-\x{FFFD}] or \x{10FFFFF}) you must use the modifier '/u' at the end of your expression.
daniel dot chcouri at gmail dot com
03-May-2009 01:09
Html tags delete using regular expression

<?php
function removeHtmlTagsWithExceptions($html, $exceptions = null){
    if(
is_array($exceptions) && !empty($exceptions))
    {
        foreach(
$exceptions as $exception)
        {
           
$openTagPattern  = '/<(' . $exception . ')(\s.*?)?>/msi';
           
$closeTagPattern = '/<\/(' . $exception . ')>/msi';

           
$html = preg_replace(
                array(
$openTagPattern, $closeTagPattern),
                array(
'||l|\1\2|r||', '||l|/\1|r||'),
               
$html
           
);
        }
    }

   
$html = preg_replace('/<.*?>/msi', '', $html);

    if(
is_array($exceptions))
    {
       
$html = str_replace('||l|', '<', $html);
       
$html = str_replace('|r||', '>', $html);
    }

    return
$html;
}

// example:
print removeHtmlTagsWithExceptions(<<<EOF
<h1>Whatsup?!</h1>
Enjoy <span style="text-color:blue;">that</span> script<br />
<br />
EOF
, array(
'br'));
?>
rabby
28-Apr-2009 02:53
With regards to the bug report for preg_match which leads to segfault errors in some cases, the solution is pretty simple. Just split the string into smaller ones. E.g. with my xampp test server a length of 5000 is ok, but with 10000 chars it fails.
Just see the example which solves an encoding problem in adddition to the preg_match bug: http://mobile-website.mobi/php-utf8-vs-iso-8859-1-59
corey [works at] effim [delete] .com
25-Apr-2009 03:52
I see a lot of people trying to put together phone regex's and struggling (hey, no worries...they're complicated). Here's one that we use that's pretty nifty. It's not perfect, but it should work for most non-idealists.

*** Note: Only matches U.S. phone numbers. ***

<?php

// all on one line...
$regex = '/^(?:1(?:[. -])?)?(?:\((?=\d{3}\)))?([2-9]\d{2})(?:(?<=\(\d{3})\))? ?(?:(?<=\d{3})[.-])?([2-9]\d{2})[. -]?(\d{4})(?: (?i:ext)\.? ?(\d{1,5}))?$/';

// or broken up
$regex = '/^(?:1(?:[. -])?)?(?:\((?=\d{3}\)))?([2-9]\d{2})'
       
.'(?:(?<=\(\d{3})\))? ?(?:(?<=\d{3})[.-])?([2-9]\d{2})'
       
.'[. -]?(\d{4})(?: (?i:ext)\.? ?(\d{1,5}))?$/';

?>

If you're wondering why all the non-capturing subpatterns (which look like this "(?:", it's so that we can do this:

<?php

$formatted
= preg_replace($regex, '($1) $2-$3 ext. $4', $phoneNumber);

// or, provided you use the $matches argument in preg_match

$formatted = "($matches[1]) $matches[2]-$matches[3]";
if (
$matches[4]) $formatted .= " $matches[4]";

?>

*** Results: ***
520-555-5542 :: MATCH
520.555.5542 :: MATCH
5205555542 :: MATCH
520 555 5542 :: MATCH
520) 555-5542 :: FAIL
(520 555-5542 :: FAIL
(520)555-5542 :: MATCH
(520) 555-5542 :: MATCH
(520) 555 5542 :: MATCH
520-555.5542 :: MATCH
520 555-0555 :: MATCH
(520)5555542 :: MATCH
520.555-4523 :: MATCH
19991114444 :: FAIL
19995554444 :: MATCH
514 555 1231 :: MATCH
1 555 555 5555 :: MATCH
1.555.555.5555 :: MATCH
1-555-555-5555 :: MATCH
520-555-5542 ext.123 :: MATCH
520.555.5542 EXT 123 :: MATCH
5205555542 Ext. 7712 :: MATCH
520 555 5542 ext 5 :: MATCH
520) 555-5542 :: FAIL
(520 555-5542 :: FAIL
(520)555-5542 ext .4 :: FAIL
(512) 555-1234 ext. 123 :: MATCH
1(555)555-5555 :: MATCH
daevid at daevid dot com
06-Mar-2009 11:18
I just learned about named groups from a Python friend today and was curious if PHP supported them, guess what -- it does!!!

http://www.regular-expressions.info/named.html

<?php
   preg_match
("/(?P<foo>abc)(.*)(?P<bar>xyz)/",
                      
'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',
                      
$matches);
  
print_r($matches);
?>

will produce:

Array
(
    [0] => abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
    [foo] => abc
    [1] => abc
    [2] => defghijklmnopqrstuvw
    [bar] => xyz
    [3] => xyz
)

Note that you actually get the named group as well as the numerical key
value too, so if you do use them, and you're counting array elements, be
aware that your array might be bigger than you initially expect it to be.
wjaspers4 [at] gmail [dot] com
27-Feb-2009 11:16
I recently encountered a problem trying to capture multiple instances of named subpatterns from filenames.
Therefore, I came up with this function.

The function allows you to pass through flags (in this version it applies to all expressions tested), and generates an array of search results.

Enjoy!

<?php

/**
 * Allows multiple expressions to be tested on one string.
 * This will return a boolean, however you may want to alter this.
 *
 * @author William Jaspers, IV <wjaspers4@gmail.com>
 * @created 2009-02-27 17:00:00 +6:00:00 GMT
 * @access public
 *
 * @param array $patterns An array of expressions to be tested.
 * @param String $subject The data to test.
 * @param array $findings Optional argument to store our results.
 * @param mixed $flags Pass-thru argument to allow normal flags to apply to all tested expressions.
 * @param array $errors A storage bin for errors
 *
 * @returns bool Whether or not errors occurred.
 */
function preg_match_multiple(
  array
$patterns=array(),
 
$subject=null,
  &
$findings=array(),
 
$flags=false,
  &
$errors=array()
) {
  foreach(
$patterns as $name => $pattern )
  {
    if(
1 <= preg_match_all( $pattern, $subject, $found, $flags ) )
    {
     
$findings[$name] = $found;
    } else
    {
      if(
PREG_NO_ERROR !== ( $code = preg_last_error() ))
      {
       
$errors[$name] = $code;
      } else
$findings[$name] = array();
    }
  }
  return (
0===sizeof($errors));
}
?>
skds1433 at hotmail dot com
19-Feb-2009 02:41
here is a small tool for someone learning to use regular expressions. it's very basic, and allows you to try different patterns and combinations. I made it to help me, because I like to try different things, to get a good understanding of how things work.

<?php
$search
= isset($_POST['search'])?$_POST['search']:"//";
$match = isset($_POST['match'])?$_POST['match']:"<>";

echo
'<form method="post">';
echo
's: <input style="width:400px;" name="search" type="text" value="'.$search.'" /><br />';
echo
'm:<input style="width:400px;" name="match" type="text" value="'.$match.'" /><input type="submit" value="go" /></form><br />';
if (
preg_match($search, $match)){echo "matches";}else{echo "no match";}
?>
Svoop
10-Feb-2009 01:42
I have written a short introduction and a colorful cheat sheet for Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE):

http://www.bitcetera.com/en/techblog/2008/04/01/regex-in-a-nutshell/
akniep at rayo dot info
30-Jan-2009 11:05
Bugs of preg_match (PHP-version 5.2.5)

In most cases, the following example will show one of two PHP-bugs discovered with preg_match depending on your PHP-version and configuration.

<?php

$text
= "test=";
// creates a rather long text
for ($i = 0; $i++ < 100000;)
   
$text .= "%AB";

// a typical URL_query validity-checker (the pattern's function does not matter for this example)
$pattern    = '/^(?:[;\/?:@&=+$,]|(?:[^\W_]|[-_.!~*\()\[\] ])|(?:%[\da-fA-F]{2}))*$/';
   
var_dump( preg_match( $pattern, $text ) );

?>

Possible bug (1):
=============
On one of our Linux-Servers the above example crashes PHP-execution with a C(?) Segmentation Fault(!). This seems to be a known bug (see http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=40909), but I don't know if it has been fixed, yet.
If you are looking for a work-around, the following code-snippet is what I found helpful. It wraps the possibly crashing preg_match call by decreasing the PCRE recursion limit in order to result in a Reg-Exp error instead of a PHP-crash.

<?php
[...]

// decrease the PCRE recursion limit for the (possibly dangerous) preg_match call
$former_recursion_limit = ini_set( "pcre.recursion_limit", 10000 );

// the wrapped preg_match call
$result = preg_match( $pattern, $text );

// reset the PCRE recursion limit to its original value
ini_set( "pcre.recursion_limit", $former_recursion_limit );

// if the reg-exp fails due to the decreased recursion limit we may not make any statement, but PHP-execution continues
if ( PREG_RECURSION_LIMIT_ERROR === preg_last_error() )
{
   
// react on the failed regular expression here
   
$result = [...];
   
   
// do logging or email-sending here
   
[...]
}
//if

?>

Possible bug (2):
=============
On one of our Windows-Servers the above example does not crash PHP, but (directly) hits the recursion-limit. Here, the problem is that preg_match does not return boolean(false) as expected by the description / manual of above.
In short, preg_match seems to return an int(0) instead of the expected boolean(false) if the regular expression could not be executed due to the PCRE recursion-limit. So, if preg_match results in int(0) you seem to have to check preg_last_error() if maybe an error occurred.
Reno
06-Jan-2009 12:52
I modified your email validation pattern to solve these issues:

- the string MUST contain a TLD
- TLD can be 2 letters long as well as 3 or more (ie: .ca, .us, .uk, .fr, etc.)
- domain name (tld not included) must contain at least 2 characters
- domain name can contain "-"if it's not the first nor the last character.

<?php

$pattern
= '/^([a-z0-9])(([-a-z0-9._])*([a-z0-9]))*\@([a-z0-9])' .
'(([a-z0-9-])*([a-z0-9]))+' . '(\.([a-z0-9])([-a-z0-9_-])?([a-z0-9])+)+$/i';

echo
preg_match ($pattern, "email-address-to-validate@host.tld");

?>
shamun dot toha at gmail dot com
25-Dec-2008 10:58
The above patterns are tested but for this type of
emails those get fails. This is most valid pattern.
<?php
/**
 * Most corrected pattern for Email validation.
 *
 */

 // Valid email
echo preg_match('/^([a-z0-9])(([-a-z0-9._])*([a-z0-9]))*
\@([a-z0-9])*(\.([a-z0-9])([-a-z0-9_-])([a-z0-9])+)*$/i'
,'09_az..AZ@host.dOMain.cOM');

// Invalid emails             
echo preg_match('/^([a-z0-9])(([-a-z0-9._])*([a-z0-9]))*
\@([a-z0-9])*(\.([a-z0-9])([-a-z0-9_-])([a-z0-9])+)*$/i'
,'09_azAZ@ho...st...........domain.com');
                           
echo
preg_match('/^([a-z0-9])(([-a-z0-9._])*([a-z0-9]))*
\@([a-z0-9])*(\.([a-z0-9])([-a-z0-9_-])([a-z0-9])+)*$/i'
,'09_azAZ@host.do@main.com');                     
?>
----------------------------
Output:
----------------------------
1 = valid
0 = invalid
0 = invalid
Alex Zinchenko
11-Dec-2008 02:15
If you need to check whether string is a serialized representation of variable(sic!) you can use this :

<?php

$string
= "a:0:{}";
if(
preg_match("/(a|O|s|b)\x3a[0-9]*?
((\x3a((\x7b?(.+)\x7d)|(\x22(.+)\x22\x3b)))|(\x3b))/"
, $string))
{
echo
"Serialized.";
}
else
{
echo
"Not serialized.";
}

?>

But don't forget, string in serialized representation could be VERY big,
so match work can be slow, even with fast preg_* functions.
rbotzer at yahoo dot com
01-Dec-2008 07:36
@Ben:

Your pattern will match 1.1.255.299  (it matches the .29 at the end out of subpattern .299)

This pattern eliminates such false positives:
/^((1?\d{1,2}|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.){3}(1?\d{1,2}|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5]){1}$/

Ronen
dbreen at gmail dot com
21-Nov-2008 05:35
When I was using the above example's syntax for named capturing groups, it worked fine on my development server (PHP 5.2.6), but then gave me a regex error on the live server (PHP 5.0.4).

By adding a 'P' in front of the parameter name, it seems to have resolved the issue (this is in accordance w/ the PCRE implementation).

To use the above example, here's the original:
<?php
preg_match
('/(?<name>\w+): (?<digit>\d+)/', $str, $matches);
?>

And here's the fix:
<?php
preg_match
('/(?P<name>\w+): (?P<digit>\d+)/', $str, $matches);
?>
Ben
25-Oct-2008 06:47
Marc your pattern will match 259.259.259.259

I think you're actually after something like this:

/((1?\d{1,2}|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.){3}(1?\d{1,2}|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])/
phil dot taylor at gmail dot com
23-Oct-2008 12:01
If you need to check for .com.br and .com.au and .uk and all the other crazy domain endings i found the following expression works well if you want to validate an email address. Its quite generous in what it will allow

<?php

        $email_address
= "phil.taylor@a_domain.tv";

    if (
preg_match("/^[^@]*@[^@]*\.[^@]*$/", $email_address)) {
        return
"E-mail address";       
    }
       
?>
Jonathan Camenisch
16-Oct-2008 02:21
@ Marc

A little more work to do--your expression matched ...256... through ...259..., and will not match 1- or 2-digit numbers that do not start with 1. It could also be a little more concise, as in:

/^(1?\d{1,2}|2([0-4]\d|5[0-5]))(\.(1?\d{1,2}|2([0-4]\d|5[0-5]))){3}$/

Also, I put together a primitive regex tester at http://j-r.camenisch.net/regex/ -- to help someone find more flaws to correct. ;-)
Marc
06-Oct-2008 08:16
@ Steve Todorov:
Your regex will not only match 999.999... but also 9999.9999... etc.

I'd rather take this regex:

/^(1\d{0,2}|2(\d|[0-5]\d)?)\.(1\d{0,2}|2(\d|[0-5]\d)?)
\.(1\d{0,2}|2(\d|[0-5]\d)?)\.(1\d{0,2}|2(\d|[0-5]\d)?)$/

this should represent any ip (v4). At least it did in a small test here ;)
Steve Todorov
03-Oct-2008 01:23
While I was reading the preg_match documentation I didn't found how to match an IP..
Let's say you need to make a script that is working with ip/host and you want to show the hostname - not the IP.

Well this is the way to go:

<?php
/* This is an ip that is "GET"/"POST" from somewhere */
$ip = $_POST['ipOrHost'];

if(
preg_match('/(\d+).(\d+).(\d+).(\d+)/',$ip))
 
$host = gethostbyaddr($ip);
else
 
$host = gethostbyname($ip);

echo
$host;
?>

This is a really simple script made for beginners !
If you'd like you could add restriction to the numbers.
The code above will accept all kind of numbers and we know that IP address could be MAX 255.255.255.255 and the example accepts to 999.999.999.999.

Wish you luck!

Best wishes,
Steve
Ashus
12-Sep-2008 03:18
If you need to match specific wildcards in IP address, you can use this regexp:

<?php

$ip
= '10.1.66.22';
$cmp = '10.1.??.*';

$cnt = preg_match('/^'
    
.str_replace(
     array(
'\*','\?'),
     array(
'(.*?)','[0-9]'),
    
preg_quote($cmp)).'$/',
    
$ip);

echo
$cnt;

?>

where '?' is exactly one digit and '*' is any number of any characters. $cmp mask can be provided wild by user, $cnt equals (int) 1 on match or 0.
wjaspers4[at]gmail[dot]com
28-Aug-2008 02:55
I found this rather useful for testing mutliple strings when developing a regex pattern.
<?php
/**
 * Runs preg_match on an array of strings and returns a result set.
 * @author wjaspers4[at]gmail[dot]com
 * @param String $expr The expression to match against
 * @param Array $batch The array of strings to test.
 * @return Array
 */
function preg_match_batch( $expr, $batch=array() )
{
// create a placeholder for our results
   
$returnMe = array();

// for every string in our batch ...
   
foreach( $batch as $str )
    {
// test it, and dump our findings into $found
       
preg_match($expr, $str, $found);

// append our findings to the placeholder
       
$returnMe[$str] = $found;
    }

    return
$returnMe;
}
?>
seth36 at gmail dot com
10-Aug-2008 09:12
For validation of email addresses, Cal Henderson's RFC 822 and RFC 2822 is_valid_email() functions rule all:

http://code.iamcal.com/php/rfc822/
Dino Korah AT webroot DOT com
08-Jul-2008 11:11
preg_match and preg_replace_callback doesnt match up in the structure of the array that they fill-up for a match.
preg_match, as the example shows, supports named patterns, whereas preg_replace_callback doesnt seem to support it at all. It seem to ignore any named pattern matched.
Tim
08-Jul-2008 03:01
I made a mistake in my previous post. Mail addresses may of course only be "exotic" in their local parts, not in the domain part. Therefore, an exotic mail address would be "exotic#%$mail@domain.com".
Tim
07-Jul-2008 09:51
For those not so familiar with regex's, I post my algorithmic email validation routine. It can more easily be changed for individual needs than regex's. My function does NOT recognize exotic email addresses as allowed by RFC. (For example, info@exotic%&$#mail.com is a legal email address but not allowed by my function.)
-Tim

<?php
function email_is_valid($email) {
   if (
substr_count($email, '@') != 1)
      return
false;
   if (
$email{0} == '@')
      return
false;
   if (
substr_count($email, '.') < 1)
      return
false;
   if (
strpos($email, '..') !== false)
      return
false;
  
$length = strlen($email);
   for (
$i = 0; $i < $length; $i++) {
     
$c = $email{$i};
      if (
$c >= 'A' && $c <= 'Z')
         continue;
      if (
$c >= 'a' && $c <= 'z')
         continue;
      if (
$c >= '0' && $c <= '9')
         continue;
      if (
$c == '@' || $c == '.' || $c == '_' || $c == '-')
         continue;
      return
false;
   }
  
$TLD = array (
        
'COM',   'NET',
        
'ORG',   'MIL',
        
'EDU',   'GOV',
        
'BIZ',   'NAME',
        
'MOBI''INFO',
        
'AERO''JOBS',
        
'MUSEUM'
     
);
  
$tld = strtoupper(substr($email, strrpos($email, '.') + 1));
   if (
strlen($tld) != 2 && !in_array($tld, $TLD))
      return
false;
   return
true;
}
?>
mailinglist dot php at hydras-world dot com
03-Jul-2008 09:30
The regexp below thinks that the e-mail address:

'me@de.com' is invalid, which it is not.

'/^([a-z0-9])(([-a-z0-9._])*([a-z0-9]))*\@
([a-z0-9])([-a-z0-9_])+([a-z0-9])*
(\.([a-z0-9])([-a-z0-9_-])([a-z0-9])+)*$/i'

I modified it and it seems to work for me in my limited tests of it.

YMMV.
brferreira at grad dot ufsc dot br
26-Jun-2008 02:48
Paperweight, this pattern worked fine for me (even for intranet adresses, like "john@localhost"; and also for subdomain emails, like "john@foo.bar.com"):
'/([a-z0-9])([-a-z0-9._])+([a-z0-9])\@
([a-z0-9])([-a-z0-9_])+([a-z0-9])
(\.([a-z0-9])([-a-z0-9_-])([a-z0-9])+)*/i'

but, still, this won't replace the "activation link", that is the better way to check if an e-mail is valid or not.
jonathan dot lydall at gmail dot removethispart dot com
26-May-2008 07:50
Because making a truly correct email validation function is harder than one may think, consider using this one which comes with PHP through the filter_var function (http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.filter-var.php):

<?php
$email
= "someone@domain .local";

if(!
filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
    echo
"E-mail is not valid";
} else {
    echo
"E-mail is valid";
}
?>
Georg
04-Apr-2008 09:36
In addition to reiner-keller's comment about Umlaute using setlocale (LC_ALL, 'de_DE');

To enable 'de_DE' on my Debian 4 machine I first had to:
- uncomment 'de_DE' in file /etc/locale.gen and afterwards
- run locale-gen from the shell

preg_quote> <preg_match_all
Last updated: Fri, 13 Nov 2009
 
 
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