regex help needed

voidstate

I am trying to write a regular expression which matches everything from the first non-numeric (or non-dot) character to the end of the string.

Basically I have a number followed by various other characters and want to be left only with the number (eg. "20.34 is the best match for 24 or 19" should be left as "20.34" after doing preg_replace).

I have tried a number of expressions but none seem to work. Can anyone help?

laserlight

Cant you cheat by applying a typecast?

$str = "20.34 is the best match for 24 or 19";
echo (float)$str;

laserlight

There may be a problem though: use of scientific notation.

Assume:

<digit>   ::= 0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9
<integer> ::= <digit> | <integer><digit>
<period>  ::= .
<float>   ::= <integer><period><integer>

A possible solution would then be:

$str = "20.34e7 is the best match for 24 or 19";
if (preg_match('/^([0-9]+\.[0-9]+)/', $str, $match))
	echo $match[0];
else
	echo "No match";

If you arent going to be bothered with scientific notation popping up, then the simple typecast is the way to go.

voidstate

Juggling the type works perfectly! Thanks!

voidstate