PHP Extract Specific Character from string

Question

i have the bellow string

$LINE = TCNU1573105  HDPE HTA108  155   155  000893520918 PAL990  25.2750 MT  28.9750 MT

and i want extract the PAL990 from the above string. actually extract PAL990 string or any string that has PAL followed by some digits Like PAL222 or PAL123

i tried many ways and could not get the result. i used,

substr ( $LINE, 77, 3)

but when the value in different position i get the wrong value.

How can you describe the context where the PAL990 is? How do you think a regex engine can find that substring? Look, HTA108 looks identical in terms of the chars your expected match consists of, so you may only rely on the context. — Wiktor Stribiżew
– Wiktor Stribiżew, Commented Oct 24, 2018 at 8:56
if there any specific pattern you need to look for, give more example — Pritam Jinal
– Pritam Jinal, Commented Oct 24, 2018 at 8:58
Do you want to extract PAL990 string only or any string that has PAL followed by some digits? Like PAL222 or PAL123 are supposed to be captured or not? If you just need PAL990 then you don't need regex — Pushpesh Kumar Rajwanshi
– Pushpesh Kumar Rajwanshi, Commented Oct 24, 2018 at 8:58
this is the format @RAN_0915 TCNU1573105 HDPE HTA108 155 155 000893520918 PAL990 25.2750 MT 28.9750 MT — kevin
– kevin, Commented Oct 24, 2018 at 8:59

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-24 09:21:32Z

1

You may use

$LINE = "TCNU1573105  HDPE HTA108  155   155  000893520918 PAL990  25.2750 MT  28.9750 MT";
if (preg_match('~\bPAL\d+\b~', $LINE, $res)) {
    echo $res[0]; // => PAL990
}

See the PHP demo and this regex demo.

Details

\b - a word boundary
PAL - a PAL substring
\d+ - 1+ digits
\b - a word boundary.

The preg_match function will return the first match.

Note that in case your string contains similar strings in between hyphens/whitespace you will no longer be able to rely on word boundaries, use custom whitespace boundaries then, i.e.:

'~(?<!\S)PAL\d+(?!\S)~'

See this regex demo

EDIT

If you may have an optional whitespace between PAL and digits, you may use

preg_replace('~.*\b(PAL)\s?(\d+)\b.*~s', '$1$2', $LINE)

See this PHP demo and this regex demo.

Or, match the string you need with spaces, and then remove them:

if (preg_match('~\bPAL ?\d+\b~', $LINE, $res)) {
    echo str_replace(" ", "", $res[0]);
}

See yet another PHP demo

Note that ? makes the preceding pattern optional (1 or 0 occurrences are matched).

edited Oct 24, 2018 at 9:21

answered Oct 24, 2018 at 9:03

Wiktor Stribiżew

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4 Comments

kevin Over a year ago

This worked but what is there is white space between PAL and 990 like this ""PAL 990" and still want the output to be PAL990

kevin Over a year ago

what i mean is sometimes it could contain white space or sometimes it may not contain any white space. in that case how would regex could handle?

Wiktor Stribiżew Over a year ago

Yes, sure. The ? makes a pattern optional.

kevin Over a year ago

Yes Your Right. best answer

Sreejith N · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-20 04:16:36Z

0

$string = "123ABC1234 *$%^&abc.";
$newstr = preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z\']/','',$string);
echo $newstr;

Output:ABCabc

answered Aug 20, 2020 at 4:16

Sreejith N

417 bronze badges

1 Comment

Toto Over a year ago

What question are you answering?

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