regexps make me crazy

[pnoeric]

ok, after like an hour of fooling around with preg_match_all I still can't figure this one out :-)

here's my input string:
"etc {$eric} test me {$again_field} blah"

what I want as output:
array('eric', 'again_field')

can someone help me crack the code?!

here's my feeble attempt:
preg_match("/{\$(.+)}/x", $v, $matches);

and it generates nothing in $matches --but if I drop the final "}" then it finds something totally wrong. ;-) argh.

best
Eric

[sidney]

$str='etc {$eric} test me {$again_field} blah'; 
preg_match_all("/\\{\\\\$([^}]*)\\}/", $str, $matches); 
print_r($matches);  

$matches[1] holds the array your looking for

[pnoeric]

thank you so much. why the double-backslash in front of the '$'?

[sidney]

The reason for this is that before the regex engine can interpret the \ into \, PHP interprets it. Thus, if you write \$, the regex engine sees $, which is reads as start of string. Thus, you have to escape your $ twice: once for PHP, and once for the regex engine. so regex sees \$

this is if you use double quotes

thats my reasoning but i may be totally wrong

[pnoeric]

innnnnnteresing. thanks.