[RESOLVED] Regex two dates apart

[scrupul0us]

I have a bunch of dates:

March 23, 2008July 30, 2008
January 22, 2008October 2, 2008

etc...

I need to break these apart with a pipe

March 23, 2008 | July 30, 2008
January 22, 2008 | October 2, 2008

I tried this:

$string = preg_replace("/([A-z]{1,}[\s]{1}[0-9]{1,2}[,\s]{1}[0-9]{4})([A-z]{1,}[\s]{1}[0-9]{1,2}[,\s]{1}[0-9]{4})/","$1 | $2",$data);

and its no go

[nrg_alpha]

perhaps:

$str = array('March 23, 2008July 30, 2008', 'January 22, 2008October 2, 2008');
foreach($str as &$val){
   $val = preg_replace('#(\d{4})([a-z]+)#i', '\1 | \2', $val);
}
echo '<pre>'.print_r($str, true);

Output (via print_r):

Array
(
    [0] => March 23, 2008 | July 30, 2008
    [1] => January 22, 2008 | October 2, 2008
)

[scrupul0us]

nrg_alpha;10901101 wrote:

perhaps:

$str = array('March 23, 2008July 30, 2008', 'January 22, 2008October 2, 2008');
foreach($str as &$val){
   $val = preg_replace('#(\d{4})([a-z]+)#i', '\1 | \2', $val);
}
echo '<pre>'.print_r($str, true);

Output (via print_r):

Array
(
    [0] => March 23, 2008 | July 30, 2008
    [1] => January 22, 2008 | October 2, 2008
)

you sir have done it 🙂

thank you very much

[nrg_alpha]

Excellent 🙂 Alternatively, the preg pattern could use a negative look ahead assertion to dictate what group of four digits to NOT add the pipe between...

EDIT

$val = preg_replace('#(\d{4})(?!$)#', '\1 | ', $val);

I'm not sure which version actually executes faster (haven't timed it).. but it saves on one capture..