PHP Regex Match URL with Specific Link Text

Question

I'm having issues matching a specific link with regex.

I'm using this regex expression, but it's not finding any matches:

<a href=\"([^\"]*)\"><em>italicized<\/em> &mdash; Some More Words ([0-9]{4})<\/a>

Additionally, the numbers portion of the link title can vary, thus the reason for the number capture group.

So the numbers can vary, but italicized and Some More Words are the exact and fixed labels? — mario
– mario, Commented Jul 26, 2014 at 5:00
@mario, yes, the italicized and Some More Words do not change. — Zach
– Zach, Commented Jul 26, 2014 at 5:01
Well, then your example regex would match the above example link except for the capture parens (not literals). — mario
– mario, Commented Jul 26, 2014 at 5:03
Hmmm...Here's the regex on a live tester: regex101.com/r/vZ9zO1/1 — Zach
– Zach, Commented Jul 26, 2014 at 5:04

mario · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-26 05:23:05Z

1

Your parens ( and ) are meta characters for capture groups.

They won't match literal paranthesis in the source text. For that they had to be escaped.

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