Quick Regex Question

help is appreciated...

[irubin]

Hello,

I have the following strings:

52{1}2
52
525{11}2

I need to extract everything up to the first { (if it exists)

Any ideas?

-R

[MonkeeSage]

I think the pattern should be...

/[^{]+/

...if there is no "{" it will get the whole string, if there is it will get everything up to it.

Not sure about the PHP method, but I think it is preg_match().

Jordan

[edit:] Oops, shouldn't have included the grouping parentheticals [/edit]

[coopster]

Are you looking for digits only before the brace? And only once? If so:

$string = '52{1}2'; 
if (preg_match("/\d+(?={)/", $string, $matches)) { 
print "<pre>"; print_r($matches); print "</pre>"; 
} 

returns:

Array
(
 [0] => 52
)

because (right out of the manual) [us2.php.net]:

"An assertion subpattern is matched in the normal way, except that it does not cause the current matching position to be changed. Lookahead assertions start with (?= for positive assertions and (?! for negative assertions. For example,
\w+(?=;)
matches a word followed by a semicolon, but does not include the semicolon in the match..."

If you want to match more than once within a single string, you will need to use preg_match_all() and add a subpattern to the regular expression. Let us know if this is the case. Regards, Coop