php regex to match string in pipe delimited text

Question

This is an example line in the document I am processing:

    2011-08-08|M|Misc Info|6PM|Away vs. First Words, Second String, Third|Other Info

I would like to get everything between "Away vs." and the next "|"

Will the document always be in a similar format? Also, how will missing data be handled in this format? — RageD
– RageD, Commented Aug 9, 2011 at 0:03
What regex were you using so far? What's your code so far? Into which problem did you run? Or are you just asking for code? — hakre
– hakre, Commented Aug 9, 2011 at 0:04
That looks pipe-separated, not pipe-delimited. Which did you mean? |a|b|c| has three three fields if pipe-delimited and five fields if pipe separated. — tchrist
– tchrist, Commented Aug 9, 2011 at 0:13

serialworm · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-09 00:04:06Z

1

Just use php's explode function to make an array.

$str = "2011-08-08|M|Misc Info|6PM|Away vs. First Words, Second String, Third|Other Info";
$arr = explode($str, '|');


$parts = $arr[4];
$newArr = explode($parts, ',');

answered Aug 9, 2011 at 0:04

serialworm

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1 Comment

RageD Over a year ago

Explode may not do well if he is processing large chunks of data. Also, this would give him several unnecessary arrays - he only needs a string extracted from his format.

Arjan · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-09 00:20:47Z

1

$string = '2011-08-08|M|Misc Info|6PM|Away vs. First Words, Second String, Third|Other Info';
$parts = explode('|', $string);
echo $parts[4]; // This is what you are looking for.

I don't see why you would use regexes here.

If you are using PHP 5.3 there's another solution:

$parts = str_getcsv($string, '|');
echo $parts[4]; // This should be the part you're looking for

str_getcsv also understands enclosed strings, making it more robust.

edited Aug 9, 2011 at 0:20

answered Aug 9, 2011 at 0:07

Arjan

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1 Comment

Jonah Over a year ago

I had tried something that did strpos() until it reached the correct pipe, but a test showed that it was considerably slower than this solution. +1.

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