How to invert a preg_grep search?

csx

Hi all! I want to do something like this in PHP: @new = grep(!/^{something$/,@old);}

That is Perl and would "preg_grep" all those data in the "old"-Array, that does not contain the word "something".

I tried it with $new = preg_grep(!"/^{something$/",$old);} and $new = preg_grep("!/^{something$/",$old);} but nothing worked as I hoped. Unfortunately, the PHP manual (http://de3.php.net/manual/en/function.preg-grep.php) is not very helpful for inverting a preg_grep.

Thanks!
csx

cassius

Couldn't you use a regular expression instead of preg_grep??

regular_expressions - PHP-manual

csx

Hi cassius!

$newarray = preg_grep("/REGEXP/",$oldarray);

uses a regular expression. as you can see. While a regexp simply searches for the occurence of a string inside another string, "grep" (similar to the UNIX grep cmmand) will return all data-rows of an array, that contain the string searched for using the regexp.

What I want to do is, that preg_grep returns all the data-rows of the "oldarray", that do not contain the regexp. In Perl you just put a "!" (NOT) before the regexp, but I have no idea how to accomplish this in PHP (I am very noob to PHP 😉

thanks for your help anyways!
csx

csx

I've found it:

$new = preg_grep("/^{something$/",$old,} PREG_GREP_INVERT);

FYI

csx

cassius

OK. I guess that's a good solution to your problem yes. In page 2 on this PDF (from PHPBuilder) you can get a simple idea about !'s in reg.ex used in PHP.

I'm a bit tired and confused now, so if my answer seems cloudy just forget about it.

You found an appropriate solution to your problem, that's good 😃