[RESOLVED] Regex matches confusion

scrupul0us

heres my regex:

preg_match_all('/<td align="right" class="gridCell[A-z]{0,3}">[0-9]{0,4}<\/td>/',$item,$qty[]);

heres the output:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [0] => <td align="right" class="gridCell">17</td>

            )

    )

[1] => Array
    (
        [0] => Array
            (
                [0] => <td align="right" class="gridCellAlt">18</td>
            )

    )

[2] => Array
    (
        [0] => Array
            (
                [0] => <td align="right" class="gridCell">48</td>
            )

    )

[3] => Array
    (
        [0] => Array
            (
                [0] => <td align="right" class="gridCellAlt">38</td>
            )

    )

)

why is it returning the HTML code and not just the numbers?

also

the regex:

preg_match("/makeWin2\('(.*)', '/",$item,$link[]);

the string:

<a href="javascript:makeWin2('localhost', '500', '400');" class="lnk">Link</a>

(note that localhost is for the devside only... once its production it will have a very long url i expect)

and the output:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => localhost', '500
        )

[1] => Array
    (
        [0] => localhost', '500
    )

[2] => Array
    (
        [0] => localhost', '500
    )

[3] => Array
    (
        [0] => localhost', '500
    )

)

why is it returning the stuff after localhost? im specifying within the single quotes???

thanks alot

cahva

Hi,

Im not an expert on regex but the first problem(not giving you the number in result) is because you didnt give the grouping ([0-9]{0,4})

The correct would be:

preg_match_all('/<td align="right" class="gridCell[A-z]{0,3}">([0-9]{0,4})<\/td>/',$item,$qty[]);

The second one will "fail" because you have .* which you shouldnt use. It will match to the end of string also.
Correct one is:

preg_match("/makeWin2\('([0-9a-zA-Z_\-\/\:\.]+)'/",$item,$link[]);

That will match with 0-9 a-z A-Z _ - / : . characters inside the first singlequotes. Add more if you like 😉

I dont know how optimized those regex's are so someone wiser can tell you if those arent 😉

halojoy

Warning, I am not sure ....
See my SIGNATURE!

But how about try with a parthes around (number) into your first

preg_match_all(
'/<td align="right" class="gridCell[A-z]{0,3}">([0-9]{0,4})<\/td>/', 
$item, 
$qty[]
);

scrupul0us

ill have junk like this in my links:

?~lt=popup&c=us&l=en&s=dfh&cs=22

so i made my regex:

preg_match("/makeWin2\('([0-9a-zA-Z_\-\/\:\.~\&\?]+)'/",$item,$link[]);

and its not matching... am i doing something wrong... again...

thanks to both for the grouping advice on the other regex!!!

bradgrafelman

By default, * and + are greedy, meaning they consume as much characters as possible that fall within the pattern, so it took the starting quote before localhost and matched all characters till the ending quote and comma after 500.

Thus, you need a slight modification to make the non-greedy:

preg_match("/makeWin2\('(.*?)', '/",$item,$link[]);

Alternatively, adding the 'U' flag at the end of your pattern would make all *'s and +'s within the pattern be non-greedy by default (thus adding a ? after them would then revert them back to greedy).

scrupul0us

brad that worked perfectly... only a "?" off from my original regex... these things seem to be my php achilles heal

thanks again to everyone for their help!

~Brian

bradgrafelman

Glad I could help. For more information (from beginner to advanced!) on regular expressions, I'd highly recommend you check out: www.regular-expressions.info . I've used that site plenty of times in the past.