preg match Problem

[webmasternovis]

Hi all,

I've got this code:

preg_match($_POST[searchterm], $row[content], $matches);
print_r($matches);

However, I get this error:

Warning: preg_match() [function.preg-match]: Delimiter must not be alphanumeric or backslash in /home/lit/public_html/searchauthor.php on line 86
Array ( )

Does anyone know whats wrong? I think its something to do with the $_POST variable, but not sure how to sort it...

Thanks a lot,
Mike

[devinemke]

what do $_POST['searchterm'] and $row['content'] look like?

[webmasternovis]

$_POST['searchterm'] just contains one word, I'm testing it with "Dickens". $row['content'] contains a lot more, it's usually around eight paragraphs though.

Thanks,
Mike

[devinemke]

the first argument that [man]preg_match[/man] expects is the regex string pattern.

[webmasternovis]

Hmmm...thanks for that...

Do you know if I could see if a certain string was contained in some other text? Could I still use preg_match?

Thanks,
Mike

[Kudose]

If your just checking to see if a string exists, you could use [man]stripos/man.

$para = "Text Dickens Text.  This should be a paragraph.";

$find = "dickens";

if((stripos($para, $find)) !== FALSE){
     echo 'Found.';
}

[webmasternovis]

That's worked, thanks 🙂