PHP Preg (regex) extracting last value from a string? not as simple as I thought

Question

I'm trying to use PHP preg to extract the integer at the end of the string below, in the example its "4", but could be any number coming after "INBOX/", also the "[email protected]" is a variable so it could be any address

STRING I'M EXTRACTING FROM:

/m/[email protected]/folder/INBOX/4

/STRING

I've been going in circles with this, I guess I don't really understand how to do this and the regex examples I am finding in my searches just don't seem to address something like this, I would greatly appreciate any help..

ps. If anyone knows of a good regex software for building queries like this (for extraction) I would appreciate letting me know as I have spent countless hours lately with regex and still haven't found a software that seems to help in this.. thanks

Is it certain that there will always be a number at the end of the string? If not, what do you want to happen - should the regex fail to match, or should it match everything after the last slash regardless? — Tim Pietzcker
– Tim Pietzcker, Commented Jul 1, 2010 at 7:47

Matthew Flaschen · Accepted Answer · 2010-07-01 03:50:53Z

2

Use:

#/([^/]*)$#

preg_match('#/([^/]*)$#', $str, $matches);

We first check for a slash. Then the capturing group is zero or more non-slash characters. Then, the end of the string. $matches[1] holds the result.

answered Jul 1, 2010 at 3:50

Matthew Flaschen

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Tim Pietzcker · Accepted Answer · 2010-07-01 07:49:50Z

1

Why not simply match \d+$ - this will match any trailing number.

if (preg_match('/\d+$/', $subject, $match)) {
    $result = $match[0];
} else {
    $result = "";
}

If you want to match anything (even it it's not a number) after the last slash, just use [^/]+$ instead:

preg_match('#[^/]+$#', $subject, $match)

edited Jul 1, 2010 at 7:49

answered Jul 1, 2010 at 6:14

Tim Pietzcker

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