preg_match_all not working

General PHP Help
#1

Hi, i am working some weeks over a project but i have a really big annoying problem…i really dont know what to do so any help will be appreciated!!! :slight_smile:

I am using curl to get a html code and filter this with pregmatchall so as i can get some numbers. Some code is here:

if (preg_match_all('/><td colspan="2" valign="top" class="topBorderLight">\(.*([0-9]{3})\) .*<span class="redfonts" \/><\/td>/', $grades_data, $matches)) { echo '<textarea rows="30" cols="100">'; print_r($matches); echo '</textarea>'; }else{ echo "Huston we have a problem!"; }

The regular expresion is OK as i saw from lumadis.be/regex/test_regex.php Instead of i tried (,*) which is more general and its working fine…what is going on? Why the first code is not working? Any help? :confused:

thx guys :slight_smile:

#2

ok, I’m pleading mostly ignorant on this so sorry if I’m may be giving wrong info.

Two things;

I think the quotes are messing up your strings - which is confusing preg

I don’t think you can embed regex into that.

#3

The quotes can’ t be wrong. I have tested this expression in a site and it is completlly correct. Now, what do you mean that i cant embed regex?

#4

As I said, I’m pleading ignorance…

I only used preg in simple string matching and you’ve got a complex one going their.

I’m just say’n… improper placement of quotes is a very common issue, yours looks correct but do take my word for it.

There are post here all the time where the problem is a misspelled variable or a missing semicolon. Just trying to cover the obvious bases.

#5

Can you be more specific? What about it isn’t working? Is there no output, no errors, some errors that we don’t know about, there’s output but not what you expected…?

#6

You mean about the regular expression? How can it be wrong since i checked it in a website (see 1st post) and it works fine! There is no output since it always goes in the else statement and prints “Huston we have a problem!”.

If i use a more general expression like (.) its works good. But, i need only some numbers and not all the string. The (.) returns something like:

(ΧΧΧΥΥΥ)  text

like:

(PLY423) mpla mpla

What i want is only the number 423 in the above example. Thats why i am using \(.*([0-9]{3})\) .*
but it does not work! It may be an encoding error or something?

I tried to echo the result of curl (where i get the webpage) and everything is fine. However, when i write the result to a file the text is in wrong encoding. May this cause the problem?

#7

I sorry if I’m always pointing out the obvious, but…

$this = str_replace(“stuffidontwant”, “”, $that);

will reduce the string to just the segment you want. Looks like if you do this for pre and post nugget, all that’s left is the nugget.

#8

Hi, you reply according to my answer! :stuck_out_tongue: The page which i work is about 800 lines. So…i guess that is somehow dificult :confused:

#9

Sometimes big problems are easily solved when broken down into smaller problems…

#10

I see in yer pattern match you have /
and that yer delimiter is /

but your using single quotes. A Single quote only escapes a .

Use a different delimter

another is your pattern for
(ΧΧΧΥΥΥ) text
if XXX is always alpha and yyy always numeric
than

\([a-zA-Z]{3}[0-9]{3}\) .*

or how about

\(\D*\d{3}\) .*

#11

Thank you my friend :slight_smile: I’ ll give it a try hoping it works.

Sponsor our Newsletter | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service