return and replace data

[bandito]

Hey guys,

 

I am trying to return some data between 2 delimiters.  For example I have sdfkasdjfk address: 1 smith road: asdkfasdjf and I want to be able to return address: 1 smith road: and replace it with an empty string.  The information between the address: and : is always different.  I have played around with preg_split(), preg_grep(), preg_replace but have had no luck.  Any ideas?

 

Thanks

[xyph]

Need more accurate sample data

[xyph]

Nevermind, reread and I think I figured it out

 

/address: ([^:])/

 

$expr = '/address: ([^:]++)/';
$str = 'sdfkasdjfk address: 1 smith road: asdkfasdjf';

preg_match( $expr, $str, $match );

print_r( $match );

 

use preg_match_all() if you have multiple results you want to return

[bandito]

That's pretty much what I want but I was hoping to replace the match with and empty string.  I managed to do using preg_match() with a combination of substr() and strlen().  Thank you very much your example works great.

[xyph]

Instead, use preg_replace()

 

<?php
$expr = '/address: [^:]++:/';
$str = 'sdfkasdjfk address: 1 smith road: asdkfasdjf';

$str = preg_replace( $expr, '', $str );

echo $str;
?>

 

[bandito]

Thanks xyph!  I ended up using booth and they work much better than what I had.  One question, in the regular expression for the work "address" , what would i need to do to see if there is 1 or more letter "d" or letter "s"?  Thanks again those regular expressions work great!

[xyph]

So you want it to match 'adres' or 'addres' or 'adress' as well?

 

/add?res?s: [^:]++:/

 

The ? means 'match previous character/group/class between zero and one times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)'