splitting a string up.

[Anon]

Hello,

I have a string that looks like this:

"[foo]bar"

Now how do I split so I get the value foo (without the brackets) in a var, and bar in another var?

Thanks.

[andrin]

The best way would be with RegExp:s I think but you could always look up the function explode() in the manual...

http://www.php.net/explode

[jim_keller]

$my_string = "[foo]bar";
$stuff = preg_match ("/[(.)](.)/", $my_string, $matches);

$matches[1] will be "foo"
$matches[2] will be "bar"

-Jim Keller
http://www.centerfuse.net

[Anon]

Im amazed how people can use this command....

Ive read it soo many times, and still cant see how it works...?

Can anyone shed some light on this command...!!!

-regards-
UniMatrix

[jim_keller]

It involves regular expressions for pattern matching. the stuff that looks like:
/[(.)](.)/
are regular expressions.

The characters have very distinct meanings. Basically this one is:

/ - in preg_match you need a delimiter at the beginning and end of the expression. / is typically used.

[ - match one left bracket. The \ needs to go in front because [ is a special character in regular expressions.

(.*) - a period means match any character, and the star following it means match any number of them. It's in parentheses so whatever is in the parentheses can be referenced later ($matches[1])

] - match one right bracket. Again it needs a \ in front of it because ] is a special character and therefore needs to be escaped.

(.*) - this again...match any number of characters any number of times, and keep it for reference later

/ - ending delimiter

the $matches parameter means to put the matches in an array called $matches.

If you really want to learn regular expressions, read "Mastering Regular Expressions" by O'Reiley. This example is very very basic, they can get incredibly complex.

-Jim Keller
http://www.centerfuse.net