ereg for 11 not 1, 12 not 2

[Anon]

Sorry about the confusing subject 🙂

Here is my problem:

I have a string:
$s = "2 3 4 5 9 11"

I want to know if the variable $n = 1 is present in that string ($s).

when I use:
if (ereg($n, $s))

the result is true because it sees '11' as a pattern containing the number 1! But this is not what I want. The string does not contain a number 1 on it's own so it should be false.

I have tried various reg exps with no luck. Can someone please tell me where I'm going wrong?

Cheers,
April

[Anon]

Hi!

This one should work. You should use preg_match as it (in my opinion) supports PCRE syntax while ereg doesn't (I may be wrong, but I tested the regexp with ereg and it didn't work).

$s = "2 3 4 5 9 1";
$n = 1;

$regexp = "/\b$n\b/i";

if (preg_match($regexp, $s))
{
print "Match found";
}
else
{
print "Match not found";
}

Best,
Stas

[mega_hurtz]

//Stas is right ereg does not support Perl style reg expressions
//if you want to find a string, you have to be extremely specific
//to find 1 instead of 11, specify that you want spaces surrounding your value

$s = "2 3 4 5 9 11";
$n = 1;

$regexp = "[[:space:]]+" . $n . "+[[:space:]]";
if (eregi($regexp, $s))
{
print "Match found";
}
else
{
print "Match not found";
}

[Anon]

Will this work for something like '2 4 1'? I don't think so.
Here's my proposal to make this functional: Add a leading and trailing blank to the string of numbers. If you want to use it without these (in your old style), use trim().
Best regards,

King Louie

[Anon]

Hi again!

// $regexp = "[[:space:]]+" . $n . "+[[:space:]]";

Space does not work at the end or beginning of the whole string. \b does, as it indicates a word boundary, so it matches at the beginning or end of string. Because \b doesn't work with ereg(), it's better to use preg_match(), as in my first example.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,
Stas