Help with Regex Syntax

Julian_Pedley

I have some code I believe would be operate faster if using PCRE
However, I am really struggling with the syntax..

Existing code:

$result = split(" ", $dataLine, 3);
$result[1]=trim(trim($result[1]),"@");
$result[2]=trim(trim($result[2]),"@");

The objective is to :
split into 3 fields
remove any leading or trailing '@'
* remove any remaining leading / trailing white spaces

Perhaps Preg_split would be best, but I dont want to change any part of $result[3]

Any inspiration or help would be welcomed.

xblue

Hi,

split() and preg_split() both are regular expression functions, and between them, preg_split() should be faster.

However, if the task is as simple as in your example, the simple string function should still be faster, I'd recommend using explode() here.

Julian_Pedley

Thanks for that.

I followed your suggestion and it seems to work; not sure if it behaves identically to split in this example so further testing required.

If you can see any way that the expression can be optimised then please let me know.

Regards

Weedpacket

One thing I'll point out is that arrays in PHP follow the common convention of starting their indices from 0; so the first three fields returned by explode() (or split() or preg_split()) would be numbers 0, 1 and 2 (and because you're using that third parameter, those are the only indices taht result). Not knowing anything about the format of $dataLine, it just looks like you're expecting them to be numbered 1, 2, and 3.

Julian_Pedley

Yes, Weed, Thanks.

Ignore what I said about [3]

It's a year since I wrote the original code.....

now ..where did I put the documentation ? 😉

regards