regular expression to grab quoted text in PHP code

Question

I have the following line:

<?php echo $this->__("mytext");?>somesometext")moretext

and I need a regular expression to grab 'mytext'. The best I could come up with is:

/\$this->__\([\'"](.*)[\'"]\)/

but in this case it returns:

mytext");?>somesometext

Can anyone get this to work?

What can mytext be? Can it contain escaped double quotes like this: <?php echo $this->__("my \" text");?>somesometext")moretext? — Bart Kiers
– Bart Kiers, Commented Nov 12, 2009 at 13:18
@Bart Yes, it can have anything you could possibly pass to a function as a string. — Manos Dilaverakis
– Manos Dilaverakis, Commented Nov 12, 2009 at 13:21

Gumbo · Accepted Answer · 2009-11-12 13:17:06Z

3

Better use PHP’s ability to parse its own code with token_get_all, step through the tokens and stop at the first T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING token.

answered Nov 12, 2009 at 13:17

Gumbo

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1 Comment

Even though impractical for my application, +1 for leveraging PHP tokenizer's power.

Richard Nguyen · Accepted Answer · 2009-11-12 13:15:32Z

2

/\$this->__\([\'"](.*?)[\'"]\)/

The ? makes the * quantifier ungreedy.

answered Nov 12, 2009 at 13:15

Richard Nguyen

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Both this and Stefan's answers are correct. Picked the one that needed the rep the most.

Stefan Gehrig · Accepted Answer · 2009-11-12 13:15:32Z

2

/\$this->__\([\'"](.*?)[\'"]\)/

should work. The ? switches the match-mode to ungreedy.

answered Nov 12, 2009 at 13:15

Stefan Gehrig

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