Where have I gone wrong here?

[DamienRoche]

All I want to do is find a match in a string - the whole string actually.

 

Here's my code:

 

<?php
$str = 'echo"<b>Hello the World!<\b>"';

if(!preg_match("#echo\"<\b>Hello the World!<\/\b>\"#", $str, $match))
{
echo "<br><b>Couldn't find:</b>".htmlentities($str)."<br>";
} else { 
echo "found match:".$match[0];}
?>

 

I have no idea where I am going wrong. I'm tried numerous reg ex combinations with escaping and also with the string - things like htmlentities() and stripslashes...I just don't know why I can't find a match.

 

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Zane]

Remove the stuff in red

"#echo\"Hello the World!\"#"

 

 

[DamienRoche]

Here's my new code:

 

<?php
$str = 'echo"<b>Hello the World!<\b>"';

if(!preg_match("#echo\"<b>Hello the World!</\b>\"#", $str, $match))
{
echo "<br><b>Couldn't find:</b>".htmlentities($str)."<br>";
} else { 
echo "found match:".$match[0];}
?>

 

OUTPUT:

 

Couldn't find:echo"<b>Hello the World!<\b>"

 

I have no idea why it's doing this. I can match just text quite easily but as soon as I introduce the <b> tag, it crumbles.

 

Any other ideas? thanks.

 

 

[Zane]

well your closing b tag is backwards

Hello the World! ... should be Hello the World!

 

and then maybe you could do

#echo\"Hello the World!\"#

[DamienRoche]

Got it. I tried without escaping b and just using the forward slash and it worked.

 

Thanks!

 

 

[JasonLewis]

Note your error, \b means word boundary. You can read more about them here: http://www.regular-expressions.info/wordboundaries.html

[ghostdog74]

why do you need to use preg_match to match a whole string. Use the equality operator ==

$str1 == $str2

 

if your string is part of a bigger string, its also simpler to use strpos().