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preg_match_all — perform global regular expression matching
Description
Search for all content in subject that matches the regular expression given by pattern and put the results into matches in the order specified by flags.
After the first match is found, subsequent searches start from the end of the previous match.
Pay special attention to PREG_PATTERN_ORDER and PREG_SET_ORDER
flags can be a combination of the following flags (note that it does not make sense to use PREG_PATTERN_ORDER and PREG_SET_ORDER together):
If using PREG_PATTERN_ORDER
Sort the results so that $matches[0] is an array of all pattern matches, $matches[1] is an array of strings matched by the subpattern in the first bracket, and so on. (That is, $matches[0] [0] is the second item in all pattern matches, $matches[0] [1] is the second item in all pattern matches, $matches[1] [0] is the match for each item. The first item in brackets, $matches[1] [0] matches the second item in each bracket)
This example will output:
So, $out[0] contains the string matching the entire pattern, and $out[1] contains the string between a pair of HTML tags.
If using PREG_SET_ORDER
Sort the results so that $matches[0] is the array of the first set of matches, $matches[1] is the array of the second set of matches, and so on. (That is, $matches[0] [0] is the complete matching string in the first set of matches, $matches[0] [1] is the complete matching string in the first bracket in the first set of matches)
This example will output:
In this example, $matches[0] is the first set of matching results, $matches[0][0] contains the text that matches the entire pattern, and $matches[0][1] contains the text that matches the first sub-pattern. text, and so on. Likewise, $matches[1] is the second set of matches, and so on.
PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE
If this flag is set, the associated string offset of each matching result will also be returned. Note that this changes the value of the returned array so that each cell in it is also an array, where the first item is the matched string and the second item is its offset within the subject. This tag is available since PHP 4.3.0.
If no tag is given, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER is assumed.
Returns the number of times the entire pattern was matched (possibly zero), or FALSE on error.
Example 1. Get all phone numbers from a text
Example 2. Search for matching HTML tags (greedy)
This example will output: