[RESOLVED] another slashes question

[Eric_T]

I have a page that searches an Excel file and returns the matches. The problem I have run into is some of the cells contain data like this “HP/Agilent”. If I enter HP/Agilent into the search field I get this error: Warning: preg_match(): Unknown modifier 'a' in /search.php on line 227

If I strip the slashes out, it does not find a match. I have also tried addslashes() and that doesn’t work. I need to be able to have the / when entered into the search field.

[NogDog]

You could use a different delimiter for your preg_match(). For example:

// instead of this:
preg_match('/HP/Agilent/', $string)
// use another special character for the regex delimiter:
preg_match('#HP/Agilent#', $string)

[Eric_T]

Thanks, That seems to have done the trick... Is there a list of special char that can be used? Or is it listed everywhere and I just managed to miss it...

[NogDog]

http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php :

Any character can be used for delimiter as long as it's not alphanumeric or backslash (). If the delimiter character has to be used in the expression itself, it needs to be escaped by backslash. Since PHP 4.0.4, you can also use Perl-style (), {}, [], and <> matching delimiters.

[Eric_T]

Thanks for all your help...