extracting useful data from text

[nicolem798]

Hello

 

I have a long variable similar to the following ...

 

$data=" text text text house cars [ball] test boat [one two three] ball toy text text a lot of text [nice ball] other text";

 

I would extract from $data and put on $test array only the text which is between

[] . So in the example above I would have an array with 3 values

 

[0] ball

[1] one two three

[2] nice ball

 

Anyone can help me to code this ?

 

Thank you

[Serenitee]

What you are looking for is regex I believe.  While I'm quite sure someone else can do this more gracefully (and possibly more "correct" as I am still learning):

 

preg_match_all("/\[(.+?)\] (.+?) \[(.+?)\] (.+?) \[(.+?)\] (.+?)/", $data, $test);

echo '<pre>';
echo print_r($test);
echo '</pre>';

 

This will return an array with each sentence bit separated, and the 1, 3, 5 sections are the information you would need:

 

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => [ball] test boat [one two three] ball toy text text a lot of text [nice ball] o
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => ball
        )

    [2] => Array
        (
            [0] => test boat
        )

    [3] => Array
        (
            [0] => one two three
        )

    [4] => Array
        (
            [0] => ball toy text text a lot of text
        )

    [5] => Array
        (
            [0] => nice ball
        )

    [6] => Array
        (
            [0] => o
        )

)
1

 

Hope this helps, or at least points you in a direction

 

[DarkWater]

<?php
$string = " text text text house cars [ball] test boat [one two three] ball toy text text a lot of text [nice ball] other text";

preg_match_all('/\[([^\]]+)\]/', $string, $matches);
print_r($matches);
?>

 

$matches[1] will be a multidimensional array containing the strings you want.

[Serenitee]

I knew someone could come along and clean that up!