[SOLVED] Help me with my preg_match plz

[physaux]

Does anyone see anything wrong with this:

 

			
preg_match('/animal\/([^<]+)">SALLY/', $contents, $match); 
echo $match;

 

The string that i would be reading would be like this:

ef="/animal/cdj87sd3">SALLY</a>

 

Where the begining is

animal/

and the end is

">SALLY

and the characters in the middle are lowercase letters and numbers, limit of 8 characters

I want the variable $match to have those 8 random characters.

 

could you please help me! Ty!!

[cags]

Try this...

 

preg_match('~animal/([a-z0-9]+){1,8}">SALLY~', $contents, $match);
echo $match[1];

 

Note the 1,8 part means to make that section between 1 and 8 characters, if theres a more specific requirement just change those numbers.

[physaux]

Ok thanks, but I am just wondering, in your example you did not "escape" the "/" after "animal"

 

Did you miss that, or are we not supposed to do that. Because I thought i read that you have to "escape" it with a "\"

 

But im new at regex, so just checking

 

thanks!

[cags]

In regular expressions you only have to escape the forward slash if that is the character you choose to use for the delimiters (the start and end character). Since you are working with a path (at least what looks like one) using the forward slash for the delimiter is not really a good idea as you'll have to do alot of escaping. I simply use the tilde (~) character as the delimiter instead.

[physaux]

In regular expressions you only have to escape the forward slash if that is the character you choose to use for the delimiters (the start and end character). Since you are working with a path (at least what looks like one) using the forward slash for the delimiter is not really a good idea as you'll have to do alot of escaping. I simply use the tilde (~) character as the delimiter instead.

 

ahhh true true I forgot you can change the delimiter. Smart. Thanks for the help!!!