How to match everything until the next space

[everisk]

Hi,

 

I'd like to match any characters until running into a space. currently i have (.)+ but I dont know how to mark the end. Thanks!

[Zane]

(.*)\s

 

???

[Garethp]

"~(.+?) ~";

 

You need the ? so that it doesn't keep going until the last space. You simply put a space after the pattern. If you use (.)+ then it'll only the last character before the space. If you use (.+?) then it'll store all the characters until the next space. If you want to match whitespace (newlines and tabs along with spaces) then use \s instead of a space, like so

 

"~(.+?)\s~";

[everisk]

Thanks!, it's working fine

[nrg_alpha]

You could also use:

 

([^\s]+)\s  -or-  (\S+)\s

 

The first example is a negated character class that basically says, 'Capture anything that is not a whitespace character [^\s] one or more times + followed by a whitespace character \s (which is not part of the capture).' , and the second one is: 'Capture any non-whitespace character \S one or more times + (followed by a whitespace character \s, which again is not part of the capture).'

Different strokes for different folks.