I have strings of data: number, space(s), then a word that can contain letters, numbers and special characters as well as spaces. I need to isolate the first number only, and then also the words only so I can re-render the data into a table.
1 foo
2 ba_r
3 foo bar
4 fo-o
EDIT: I was attempting this with "^[0-9]+[" "]" however that doesn't work.
You can use this regex to capture each line:
/^(\d+)\s+(.*)$/m
This regex starts on each line, captures one or more digits, then matches one or more space characters, then captures anything until the end of line.
Then, with preg_match_all(), you can get the data you want:
preg_match_all( '/^(\d+)\s+(.*)$/m', $input, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER);
Then, you can just parse out the data from the $matches array, like this:
$data = array();
foreach( $matches as $match) {
list( , $num, $word) = $match;
$data[] = array( $num, $word);
// Or: $data[$num] = $word;
}
A print_r( $data); will print:
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[0] => 1
[1] => foo
)
[1] => Array
(
[0] => 2
[1] => ba_r
)
[2] => Array
(
[0] => 3
[1] => foo bar
)
[3] => Array
(
[0] => 4
[1] => fo-o
)
)
^, $ and the m modifier. the m modifier here is only necessary to have matches with ^ and $. however since .* does not match newlines without the s, and the pattern must therefore be matched within a single line anyway, this is not really necessary. the only thing it does is not having a mathc in lines that have non-digit caracters before the leading number. and i dont know why one would want that. a simpler solution for the same thing would be .* in the beginning. also the loop appears unnecessary.m does. hwoever a simple .* in the beginning is clear).* does not match newlines, which is something somebody can easily forget. But, anchoring the regex at the start/end of line not only distinctly and clearly defines that the match we are looking for spans one complete line, it also prevents errors where another regex could match within a line, which would be incorrect. For example: foo 1 bar 2 baz 3. Clearly this is erroneous input, and should be ignored.$str = <<<body
1 foo
2 ba_r
3 foo bar
4 fo-o
body;
preg_match_all('/(?P<numbers>\d+) +(?P<words>.+)/', $str, $matches);
print_r(array_combine($matches['numbers'],$matches['words']));
outputs
Array
(
[1] => foo
[2] => ba_r
[3] => foo bar
[4] => fo-o
)