How to ignore white spaces in a string using Regex in php

Question

I have a string = "[VIDEO]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etye3skwu9w[/Video]"

I am using the following Regex to match VIDEO tags

'/\[VIDEO\](.+?)\[\/VIDEO\]/i'

It works fine if there is no space in [VIDEO] tag. But if there is any space like [ VIDEO ], it will not work.

How can I ignore spaces. I mean if the Tag is like this [ VIDEO ], my REGEX Should Work.

ThiefMaster · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-14 07:56:55Z

3

Add a \s* at the positions where you want to allow whitespace. \s is whitespace, * is any number of repetitions (including zero):

'/\[\s*VIDEO\s*\](.+?)\[\s*\/VIDEO\s*\]/i

answered Apr 14, 2013 at 7:56

ThiefMaster

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Comments

PurkkaKoodari · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-14 07:58:46Z

1

\s matches any whitespace. You could use this:

'/\[\s*VIDEO\s*\](.+?)\[\s*\/\s*VIDEO\s*\]/i'

This allows whitespaces like [ VIDEO ] or [/ VIDEO]. Or, to allow just spaces

'/\[ *VIDEO *\](.+?)\[ *\/ *VIDEO *\]/i'

or one space

'/\[ ?VIDEO ?\](.+?)\[ ?\/ ?VIDEO ?\]/i'

answered Apr 14, 2013 at 7:58

PurkkaKoodari

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