Check a string for occurrence of multiple values in PHP

Question

I'm running a check on a retrieved biography string to find out if an artist is still active.

example bio:

$bio = 'Band was a psychedelic/progressive rock band';

At the moment I have

$active = (strpos($bio, 'was an')) ? false : true;

But I also want to check for other occurrences. Like:

$inactives = array('was a', 'was an', 'died', 'were a');

Is there a simple way of doing this without the use of a loop? So if the bio string contains any values that are inside the inactives array then return false.

Somewhat similar; stackoverflow.com/questions/4547478/…

Koen.
– Koen.

2013-11-14 00:08:20 +00:00
Commented Nov 14, 2013 at 0:08 — Koen.
– Koen., Commented Nov 14, 2013 at 0:08

hek2mgl · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-13 23:19:43Z

4

Try this regex approach:

if(preg_match('~(was a|was an|died|were a|were an)~', $input)) {
    echo 'not active anymore';
}

or simpified:

if(preg_match('~(was an?|died|were an?)~', $input)) {
    echo 'not active anymore';
}

answered Nov 13, 2013 at 23:19

hek2mgl

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