ereg
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
ereg — Regular expression match
Description
int ereg
( string $pattern
, string $string
[, array &$regs
] )
Searches a string
for matches to the regular
expression given in pattern
in a case-sensitive
way.
Parameters
-
pattern
-
Case sensitive regular expression.
-
string
-
The input string.
-
regs
-
If matches are found for parenthesized substrings of
pattern
and the function is called with the
third argument regs
, the matches will be stored
in the elements of the array regs
.
$regs[1] will contain the substring which starts at the first left
parenthesis; $regs[2] will contain the substring starting at the
second, and so on. $regs[0] will contain a copy of the complete string
matched.
Return Values
Returns the length of the matched string if a match for
pattern
was found in string
,
or FALSE if no matches were found or an error occurred.
If the optional parameter regs
was not passed or
the length of the matched string is 0, this function returns 1.
Examples
Example #1 ereg() example
The following code snippet takes a date in ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD) and
prints it in DD.MM.YYYY format:
<?php
if (ereg ("([0-9]{4})-([0-9]{1,2})-([0-9]{1,2})", $date, $regs)) {
echo "$regs[3].$regs[2].$regs[1]";
} else {
echo "Invalid date format: $date";
}
?>
Notes
Note:
preg_match(), which uses a Perl-compatible
regular expression syntax, is often a faster alternative to
ereg().
Note:
Up to (and including) PHP 4.1.0 $regs will be
filled with exactly ten elements, even though more or fewer than
ten parenthesized substrings may actually have matched. This has
no effect on ereg()'s ability to match more
substrings. If no matches are found, $regs
will not be altered by ereg().
ereg_replace
