[SOLVED] extract quoted strings

[rarebit]

Hi,

Whats the best way to extract quoted strings?

Given the following example:

this isn't an "interesting example", but 'then what' would we expect?

The main problem is the single quote in "isn't", can this be (generally) caught because in this type of situation it is concatenated between other characters, whereas a string generally has whitespace on at least one side. This however wouldn't catch situations like:

I saw 'em 'ther day like...

Any suggestions?

Cheers

[DarkWater]

How about:

 

<?php
$string = <<<STRING
this isn't an "interesting example", but 'then what' would we expect?
STRING;

preg_match_all('/\B(["\'])(.+?)\1\B/s', $string, $matches);
print_r($matches);

 

Worked for me.

[rarebit]

I likes it, a lot!

Never used 'back references' before (ref), very useful.

As expected the following fails a little...

$string = "I saw 'em 'ther day like 'had bells' on they did \"that arh\" y'know! But 'hey what's thee' expect like?";
print $string."<br>";
preg_match_all('/\B(["\'])(.+?)\1\B/s', $string, $matches);
print_r($matches[0]);

 

VERY GOOD, CHEERS MR dARKwATER!

[DarkWater]

The good part is that it didn't fail on 'hey what's thee'.

[rarebit]

I'm thinking the issue revolves around contractions and was wondering if there were a finite number of generally used instances, but even I make 'em up as I go...

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/grammar/contractions/list.shtml

http://homeschool.consumerhelpweb.com/subjects/languagearts/commoncontractionssimple.htm