isolating text in double quotes

[tonymc]

I am still somewhat of a newbie with PHP but do understand basic concepts. Here's what I'm trying to do:

I'd like to identify portions of text in a string that are enclosed in double quotation marks. For instance, given the string:

$string = 'the "quick brown fox" jumped over "the lazy" dog'

Is there a way to isolate the portions of the string that are enclosed in double quotes? I initially thought that I could use explode() or substr() to accomplish this, but am getting nowhere... If somebody could lend a suggestion or two to get me started down the right path, I'd be very grateful and appreciative.

Ideally, I'd like to have an array as such:

Array
(
[0] => the
[1] => "quick brown fox"
[2] => jumped
[3] => over
[4] => "the lazy"
[5] => dog

)

[HalfLife]

First of all, the string should be:

$string = "the \"quick brown fox\" jumped over \"the lazy\" dog";

either " or ' can start and close strings, but when you want to print a quote inside a string without terminating it php translates it to \".

[Installer]

There is nothing wrong with the way your (tonymc) example string is constructed, and, in fact, that is for many the preferred way to do it.

[suntra]

I would go with PREG...

This first example will only extract text between quotes :

 $string = 'the "quick brown fox" jumped over "the lazy" dog';
$arrMatches = array();
preg_match_all('/"([^"]*?)"/', $string, $arrMatches);
for($intM = 0; $intM < count($arrMatches[1]); $intM++) {
    printf(('Text between quotes : %s<br />' . "\n"), $arrMatches[1][$intM]);
}

And now, a bit more complex, but will show before quotes and between quotes, and then, end of the sentence...

$string = 'the "quick brown fox" jumped over "the lazy" dog which was "quite tired" but...';
$arrMatches = array();
preg_match_all('/([^"]*?)"([^"]*?)"/m', $string, $arrMatches);
for($intM = 0; $intM < count($arrMatches[1]); $intM++) {
    printf(('Before quotes : %s<br />' . "\n"), $arrMatches[1][$intM]);
    printf(('Between quotes : %s<br />' . "\n"), $arrMatches[2][$intM]);
    echo (($intM < (count($arrMatches[1]) - 1)) ? 'Next...' : '') . "<br /><br />\n";
}
$strEnd = ((!(strrpos($string, '"') === false)) ? substr($string, (strrpos($string, '"') + 1)) : '');
printf(('End of the sentence : %s<br />' . "\n"), $strEnd);

[suntra]

HalfLife wrote:

First of all, the string should be:

$string = "the \"quick brown fox\" jumped over \"the lazy\" dog";

either " or ' can start and close strings, but when you want to print a quote inside a string without terminating it php translates it to \".

Wrong...

tonymc wrote this :

'the "quick brown fox" jumped over "the lazy" dog'

We have simple quotes, which will tell PHP that the string is only a string. So PHP will not replace variables...

You can combine single quotes and double quotes without escaping them...

$strVar1 = 'There is a " double quote in the middle.';
$strVar2 = "These is a ' single quote in the middle.";

// BUT always escape if you use the same type of quotes !

$strVar3 = "There is a \" double quote in the middle.";
$strVar4 = 'There is a \' single quote in the middle.';