[SOLVED] PREG_match help

[briant]

These regular expressions are so hard to understand. Anyone know of a really good tutorial?

 

My problem is this.

 

$content = "<h2>hi</h2> 123 (cats)<br> 456 (dogs)<br> 789 (fishes)";

 

I want to be able to match 456 because of dogs. Usually I can do it if the pattern is before but since this is after, how can I do it?

 

PS: This is for content I have no control over, so I can't change the content.

[gevans]

There is a good starting tutorial here at phpfreaks

 

http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorial/regular-expressions-part1---basic-syntax

 

Also the sub forum http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php/board,43.0.html would've been a good starting place for your post!

[gevans]

my regex isn't brilliant, but this should work;

 

<?php
preg_match('/([0-9]+) \(dogs\)/', $content, $matches);

echo $matches[1];
?>

[briant]

Oh sorry, I should have looked through the other forums.

 

Thank you for your help. I will try that out and let you know.

 

I will try to read the tutorial as well.

 

If it doesn't work out, I think I will just do a strstr function to get what I want.

 

Thanks for your assistance.

[briant]

It worked, thanks so much.

 

My example was kind of stupid since the numbers 456 should've been anything including letters.

 

But I'll figure it out. Thanks for your example gevans. You've been more than helpful.