[RESOLVED] preg_match ***

boujii

Hello my guru friends,
I've been bouncing around the forum and the php manual for knowledge about this. While I did learn a bit more, I still have not quite resolved my issue.

$haystack = GB_PrintUnit($vUnit);

// $haystack would return something like:
// Mardigator alligator_mardigator (animal) Size: 2x2, Mastery:  
// or
// African Tulip Tree africantulip (tree) Size: x, Mastery: *
// or
// Holiday Alpaca alpaca_holiday (animal) Size: 2x2, Mastery:

if ( preg_match('/***/', $haystack) ) {
fwrite($fh2, $haystack);
}

What I am trying to accomplish is to write $haystack to a text file for every string that has the Mastery: ***.

I just can't seen to get the regexp format right. Some entries may have one or two . Only the ones that have three in the string I want to have written.
Thought perhaps someone could give me an example. I've played around a bit with using special characters but just can't get it right.

NogDog

"" is a special character in a regexp, so you need to escape it with a back-slash "*" if you want to search for a literal asterisk. You therefore might use something like:

'/Mastery: *\*{3}/'

The first asterisk is being used as a repetition modifier, while the one after the back-slash is a literal asterisk.

NogDog

bradgrafelman;11003768 wrote:
Why use regular expressions at all when it sounds like [man]strpos/man will work (which is both simpler and more efficient)?

Although in the long run, you might need it if, for example, an entry could have more than three asterisks but you only want to match those with exactly three -- it all depends on the actual requirements.

boujii

NogDog;11003766 wrote:
"" is a special character in a regexp, so you need to escape it with a back-slash "*" if you want to search for a literal asterisk. You therefore might use something like:
'/Mastery: *\*{3}/'
The first asterisk is being used as a repetition modifier, while the one after the back-slash is a literal asterisk.

That's the ticket. Thank you very much 🙂