[SOLVED] Extracting specific number of words from text

[dpacmittal]

I am trying to use a regex to extract first 80 words to be used as excerpts on wordpress. I know of other ways, but I want to know how to achieve this using regexes.

[Garethp]

<?php

preg_match_all('~((?:\w\s?))~', $String, $Matches);

foreach($Matches[1] as $k=>$v)
{
if($k > 79)
	{
	unset($Matches[1][$k]);
	}
}

$Matches = $Matches[1];

print_r($Matches);

?>

[Adam]

Try this:

 

if (preg_match('#([\w]+\s?){0,80}#', $str, $matches))
{
    print $matches[0];
}

 

Edit: Actually this would run into problems with characters such as quotes, commas, dots, etc. hmm

[Garethp]

That doesn't actually work. I forget why, but I remember reading that a pattern like that will only match the last word, and after testing it, that holds true

[Adam]

Mine? I have a working test of it. Albeit simple text, i weren't thinking about punctuation at the time.

 

<?php

$str = 'one two three four five six seven eight nine ten one two three four five six seven eight nine ten one two three four five six seven eight nine ten';

if (preg_match('#([\w]+\s?){0,30}#', $str, $matches))
{
    print $matches[0];
}

?>

[Garethp]

Oh! You're echoing the 0. Hahah, I was using this code

 

<?php

$str = 'one two three four five six seven eight nine ten one two three four five six seven eight nine ten one two three four five six seven eight nine ten';

preg_match('#([\w]+\s?){0,5}#', $str, $matches);

print_r ($matches[1]);


?>

 

It echoed the 1 instead, which is where it stuffed up

[dpacmittal]

What I did was similar to Mr.Adam's solution.

 

preg_match('!(\s*\S*){1,50}!', $str, $matches);
var_dump($matches);

 

That doesn't actually work. I forget why, but I remember reading that a pattern like that will only match the last word, and after testing it, that holds true

True, but I can always use $matches[0] to get what I needed. I am average at regexes, can you explain your regex?

[Garethp]

Mine works like Adams, it searches for all word characters, without limit. Then it runs through $Matches[1] and unsets all but the first 80 matches

[.josh]

preg_match_all('~\S+~',$string,$matches);
$newString = implode(' ',array_slice($matches[0],0,79));
echo $newString;

 

 

 

 

[dpacmittal]

preg_match_all('~\S+~',$string,$matches);
$newString = implode(' ',array_slice($matches[0],0,79));
echo $newString;

This removes the newline and tabs as well, doesn't it?

[.josh]

it matches anything that is not a space shortcut (\S)

 

\S : space, tab, newline

 

So in the end $newString will not have any tabs or newlines.