PHP Regex Match Text Between quotes

Question

I have the following text....

B/H888/QG and I would like to extract the H888 from this. There will always be two forwards slashes encapsulating this.

$subject = "B/H888/QG";
$pattern = '/(.+)/';
preg_match($pattern, $subject, $matches);
print_r($matches);

The best I can get to is the above however this is completely wrong and outputs

H888/QG!

deceze · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-08 13:36:51Z

4

You need to delimit the regex pattern, in this case the / are taken as the delimiters. Use something else:

$pattern = '!/(.+)/!';

answered Dec 8, 2011 at 13:36

deceze♦

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Comments

nickb · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-08 13:35:17Z

3

Why use a regex? Just use explode.

$subject = "B/H888/QG";
$pieces = explode( '/', $subject);
echo $pieces[1]; // Outputs H888

If you must use a regex, you need something like this:

$subject = "B/H888/QG";
$pattern = '/\/([\w\d]+)\//';
preg_match($pattern, $subject, $matches);
echo $matches[1]; // Outputs H888

answered Dec 8, 2011 at 13:35

nickb

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I was obviously trying to over complicate things there!