PHP » Strings » preg_match_all()
- Syntax:
- int preg_match_all(string pattern, string s [, array matches [, int flags [, int offset]]])
- s
- String to search in.
- matches
- Array where matches will be returned.
- flags
- Whether to return offsets.
- offset
- Offset to start the search at.
Pattern matching with Perl style regular expressions. Returns multiple matches.
This function works as preg_match(), but returns all matching portions of a string. To facilitate this, a dimension is added to the array with returned matches. The flags parameter has two additional possible values: PREG_PATTERN_ORDER means that the returned array will have all full pattern matches first, followed by all matches of the first submatch, and so on. PREG_SET_ORDER returns the first full pattern match and all its submatches followed by the next full pattern match and its submatches and so on.
Examples
Code:
<pre>
<?php
$s = "This is not the sentence we are looking for."
. " Coding PHP is fun."
. " Here is another sentence we do not care about."
. " More about PHP";
if (preg_match_all("/[\w ]*PHP[\w ]*/", $s, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE)) {
print_r($matches);
} else {
print "The pattern did not match anything";
}
?>
</pre> Output:
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[0] => Coding PHP is fun
[1] => 44
)
[1] => Array
(
[0] => More about PHP
[1] => 110
)
)
) Explanation:
Unlike preg_match(), preg_match_all() returns all the matches.
See Also:
