Writing a regex for "Not X"

[Buyocat]

I want to find the first character which is NOT alphanumeric (also quotes are allowed), but I'm not sure how to express that in regex.  Can anyone lend a hand?  The closest I can get is: /\W/ which almost works except it doen't catch the quote (double or single) correctly.

 

Thanks!

[effigy]

That should work, but it will bypass _. [^A-Za-z0-9] is better (unless you're also dealing with "special" characters, like ß).

 

Does this not show a double quote for you?

 

<pre>
<?php
$string = 'abc0976123kmhsfkshdf"!(*';
preg_match('/\W/', $string, $matches);
print_r($matches);
?>
</pre>

[Buyocat]

I actually get an error running your script for some reason:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING in /Users/Kanti/Sites/test.php on line 3

 

At any rate I ran my own test and find that the double quote and single quote do not pass through the current regex.  Again, I want to find the first character which is not alphanumeric or a quote (single or double).  As for symbols such as hyphons and underscores, I'm willing to have them work or not.

 

Thanks for your response.

 

[effigy]

That's awkward. Was that the only code in the entire file?

[Buyocat]

Ya, I'm not sure why it was failing.  I only spent a few minutes trying to fix it, but failed.  It's odd since my own code is

 

public static function findFirst($haystack, $pattern) {
	preg_match($pattern, $haystack, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
	if (empty($matches))
		return -1;
	return $matches[0][1];
}

So, its very similar.  Maybe the lack of the flag was the problem?

[effigy]

What's your PHP version?

[Buyocat]

5.2.1

[effigy]

Same here.