[SOLVED] regular expression

[ess14]

having a little trouble with this expression....im very new to regular expressions, so its no wonder im having trouble.

As you can see (when u run this script) im getting no output.

the problem seems to be the fullstop (.)

how do i get the array to return the word 'lambs.'?

even when i try escape the full stop, its like the stop is still stuffing things up...what am i missing?

 

function findinside($start, $end, $string) {
        preg_match_all('/' . preg_quote($start, '/') . '([^\.)]+)'. preg_quote($end, '/').'/i', $string, $m);
        return $m[1];
    }
    
    $start = "13";
    $end = "mary";
    $string = "mary has 6 lambs. phil has 13 lambs. mary stole phil's lambs. now mary has all the lambs.";

    $out = findinside($start, $end, $string);

    print_r ($out);

[discomatt]

Wrong forum... but do you want as many results as possible, or as few? IE

 

$start = 'mary';

$end = 'lambs';

 

$string = 'there are 5 lambs. mary has 3 lambs and john has 2 lambs';

or

$string = 'there are 5 lambs. mary has 3 lambs and john has 2 lambs';

[ess14]

in my usage it should only have 1 result. ie there will be no more matches.

if u look at the above code the start and end can only leave 1 thing. but how do i get that into the array?

the full stop is stuffing it up somehow

[discomatt]

So as few times as possible?

[ess14]

yes, few

[Kieran Menor]

As far as I can see, text matching ([^\.)]+) does not exist between the start and the end.

 

If ([^\.)]+) should work, neither a . or a ) could be present between the start and the end, but there is a .

 

13 lambs. mary

[ess14]

decided on this:

preg_match('/' . preg_quote($start, '/') . '(.*)'. preg_quote($end, '/') .'/i', $string, $m);