PHP and regex: how to preg_match on multiple line?

Question

My HTML is:

line1
line2

line3 59800 line4
line5
line6

My goal is to capture: (25 left characters)59800(25 right characters):

I tried with

/.{1,25}59800.{1,25}/igm

But I only captures:

line3 59800 line4

How do I capture multiple lines?

Peter Mortensen · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-04 16:08:05Z

7

Instead of m, use the s (DOTALL) flag in your regex:

/.{1,25}59800.{1,25}/s

The s modifier is used to make DOT match newlines as well where m is used to make anchors ^ and $ match in each line of multiline input.

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jul 7, 2014 at 20:20

anubhava

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Comments

Peter Mortensen · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-04 16:09:03Z

1

Adding to @anubhava's answer, which is correct:

You don't need the i flag as there are no letters mentioned in the regex
The g flag doesn't exist in PHP.
You can also use (?s) to activate DOTALL mode, allowing the dot to match across lines

In PHP you can do this:

$regex = '~(?s).{1,25}59800.{1,25}~';
if (preg_match($regex, $yourstring, $m)) {
    $thematch = $m[0];
}
else { // No match...
}

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jul 7, 2014 at 21:49

zx81

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