php preg_match multiple patterns

Question

I need to find a string like this @[0000:0000:Username] in a text.

Then I need to extract the first number sequence (user-id) and the Username. Then I need to replace them with a link.

I'm able to extract the first number sequence but the Username is variable. It can have multiple words (and spaces) but it can also be a single word e.g "John", "John Doe", "John Doe Junior".

The Username can contain alphanumeric characters, periods, underscores and dashes.

This is what I have now with username up to 4 words:

/@\[(\d*):\d*:(\S*|\S*\s*\S*\s*\S*\s*\S*)\]/

And this is the link I'd like to create:

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/user-id/" target="_blank">Username</a>

I'm trying to it like this:

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/$1/" target="_blank">$2</a>

This works fine if only one match is found. As soon as there's more matches it messes up.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

@AmalMurali It won't allow more than 4 words in the username. — Barmar
– Barmar, Commented Dec 31, 2013 at 11:58
@Barmar: Well, the OP says Obviously this doesn't work.. It does (for the examples shown in the question anyway). I think the question could be improved by explaining all your requirements, @Ziggy. — Amal
– Amal, Commented Dec 31, 2013 at 12:02
He said "with username up to 4 words". That's his way of describing the unwanted limitation. — Barmar
– Barmar, Commented Dec 31, 2013 at 12:10

score 1 · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-31 12:41:30Z

1

This should do the trick:

/@\[(\d+):\d+:([^\]]+)\]/

[^]] searches for all characters that are not ], so basically everything up to the final ]

edited Dec 31, 2013 at 12:41

answered Dec 31, 2013 at 11:57

user253984

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1 Comment

Toto Over a year ago

The second capture should be the username, not the second number.

Barmar · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-31 11:58:15Z

0

Try:

/@\[(\d*):\d*:([\w. \-]*)\]/m

[\w. \-] matches a letter, number, underscore, period, space, and dash. * after it allows any number of these.

answered Dec 31, 2013 at 11:58

Barmar

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8 Comments

Barmar Over a year ago

yes, you do need to escape -. It's the range operator, as in A-Z.

Barmar Over a year ago

His original regexp says \d*. Since that wasn't the part he's having a problem with, I assumed it's what he wants.

Barmar Over a year ago

See stackoverflow.com/questions/20758841/… for what happens if you forget to escape -.

Barmar Over a year ago

That's true. But since I didn't put it there, I needed to escape it. This is a simpler, safer, more general way to do it.

revo Over a year ago

no need to escape - at the beginning or at the end of character class.

|

revo · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-31 13:30:04Z

0

@\[(\d+):\d+:([-\w. ]+)\]

Live demo

edited Dec 31, 2013 at 13:30

answered Dec 31, 2013 at 13:21

revo

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1 Comment

Ziggy Over a year ago

And this one too. Thanks folks!

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