PHP regular expression not working

Question

I am trying to get those matches from an html file. It has several statements on them looking like this:

links(6)  = "chicas-con-juguetes.asp"

I am trying to extract them with this function:

    public static function extract_all_vid_links($html){
    $pattern="links([0-9])  = \"(.*).asp\"";
    preg_match_all( "/$pattern/i", $html ,$out, PREG_SET_ORDER);

    print_r($out);
    //    foreach($out as $values){
    //       echo $values[0]."<br/>";
    //   }
}

But it is not working!?!? why?

modified:

    $pattern="links\([0-9]\)  = \"(.*).asp\"";
    preg_match_all( "/$pattern/i", $html ,$out, PREG_SET_ORDER);

Still doesn't work.

You need to escape the ( and ) characters if you don't want to create a new match-group, take a look here: links\(\d\). — hakre
– hakre, Commented Jun 3, 2012 at 12:00
I thought about it...and no, it is irrelevant..Jeroens answer worked — Dmitry Makovetskiyd
– Dmitry Makovetskiyd, Commented Jun 3, 2012 at 12:08

hakre · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-03 12:03:59Z

2

You need to escape the ( and ) characters if you don't want to create a new match-group, take a look here: links\(\d\).

This does fix the problem you have described (so your description is wrong probably):

<?php
header('Content-Type: text/plain;');


$html = 'links(6)  = "chicas-con-juguetes.asp"';

$pattern="links\(\d\)  = \"(.*).asp\"";
$r = preg_match_all( "/$pattern/i", $html ,$matches);

var_dump($r, $matches);

Demo, Output:

int(1)
array(2) {
  [0]=>
  array(1) {
    [0]=>
    string(37) "links(6)  = "chicas-con-juguetes.asp""
  }
  [1]=>
  array(1) {
    [0]=>
    string(19) "chicas-con-juguetes"
  }
}

answered Jun 3, 2012 at 12:03

hakre

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4 Comments

Dmitry Makovetskiyd Over a year ago

I think ur answer..worked.. why did you put \d and not [0-9]? does it matter

Jeroen Over a year ago

No, \d is exactly the same as [0-9].

hakre Over a year ago

@DmitryMakovetskiyd: Probably the string is not what you told it is. You probably want to scrape actual HTML and you only pasted what you see in the browser? Or your actual data differs in some other way?

Dmitry Makovetskiyd Over a year ago

I had to use the file get content to get the html.. but , you are right, I forgot to escape those () brackets..thats where the error lied

Jeroen · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-03 12:04:57Z

1

preg_match_all('/links\([0-9]+\)  = \"([^\.]*?).asp\"/i', $html, $out, PREG_SET_ORDER);

You need to escape the () characters. Also, I added a + after [0-9] so that numbers above 9 also work.

answered Jun 3, 2012 at 12:04

Jeroen

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