[RESOLVED] Pattern matching with preg_match not working

[shurrupak]

I'm trying to find a needle in a "haystack" using preg_match() given that the haystack is an array of items x, y, z.

The snippet is like this:

$gethay=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table");
$haystack=mysql_fetch_array($gethay);
preg_match('/\b' . preg_quote($haystack['element']) . '\b/i', $needle);

If the haystack contains "apple", "plum", "orange" and I'm looking for "plum" preg_match() won't find it unless it's the last element of the array (i.e. I delete item "orange").

Does anyone know a solution to overcome this?

Thanks!!!

[NogDog]

I'm a little confused: At least from your variable names, it looks like you are searching for a haystack in a needle. Anyway, assuming it's just a case of naming confusion but not an actual logic error, have you echoed out both $haystack['element'] and $needle to see if they have the expected values and that $haystack['element'] actually appears within $needle?

[shurrupak]

Yeah, I should have put it differently but I AM searching the haystack in the needle 😃
What I basically have is a list of names (stored in a mysql table) and a string (variable) - then I want to search for the string occurrence against each name in the table (ie. the string is "string-123abc" and one of the names I'm looking for is "string";

I know it can be done the other way around but neither the string or the list of names are known...:eek:

However, I can find the string I'm looking for in the list of names but only if the string is the last in the array 😕
If the list (from the database) contains both my string and something else it won't work...

[NogDog]

So if I understand, it sounds like you need to loop through the query results:

$gethay=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table");
$found = false;
while($haystack=mysql_fetch_assoc($gethay))
{
   if(preg_match('/\b' . preg_quote($haystack['element']) . '\b/i', $needle))
   {
      $found = true;
      echo "Found match for '$needle' in '{$haystack['element']}'.<br />\n"; 
   }
}
if(!$found)
{
   echo "No matches found.";
}

[shurrupak]

Thanks NogDog, that worked like a charm 🙂

[Weedpacket]

Heh, I was a bit bored.

$gethay = mysql_query('Select element from table');
$elements = array();
while($element = mysql_fetch_array($gethay)) $elements[] = $element['element'];
$found_elements = array_intersect($elements, preg_split('/\b/', $needle));