Or operater in regular expression

[kevinkhan]

I have this function set up

 

  preg_match('%[studied at|Went to] \\\u003ca href=\\\\"http:\\\/\\\/www.facebook.com\\\/pages\\\/[a-zA-Z-]*\\\/\d*\\\\" data-hovercard=\\\\"\\\/ajax\\\/hovercard\\\/page.php\?[a-zA-Z=0-9]*\\\\">([a-zA-Z\s]*)\\\u003c\\\/a>%', $page, $match);
    if($match && count($match)>0) {
        echo "Match Found";
        htmlOut($match[1]); //Lives in u003ca href="http:\/\/www.facebook.com
    }

 

how come its picking up a match for this code

 

Works at \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Cork-University-Hospital\/111186745584982\" data-hovercard=\"\/ajax\/hovercard\/page.php?id=111186745584982\">Cork University Hospital\u003c\/a>

 

I only want a regular expression that will match for "Went to" or "Goes to" or "Studies at" and not "Works at"

[salathe]

[studied at|Went to] is a character class asking to match any one character from the list of S, t, u, d, i, and so on.  So, the letter "t" from "Works at" successfully matches at that point!

 

You want to use a group (parentheses) rather than a character class (square brackets).