Most efficient way to check if a string in PHP is a valid regular expression

Asked Aug 07 '12 at 20:00

Active Aug 07 '12 at 20:00

Viewed 359 times

Possible Duplicate:
Is there a regular expression to detect a valid regular expression?
Test if a string is regex

Given a string, I have a case where I want to be able to check if it is a regular expression. So far, the best approach I have is this:

<?php

function validate_regex($str){
    return preg_match($str, "anything here") !== false;
}

Is there a better way to check this?

edited May 23 '17 at 10:25

Community

asked Aug 07 '12 at 20:00

Anthony Bishopric

http://php.net/manual/en/function.preg-last-error.php ? – Marc B Aug 07 '12 at 20:02
Here you go: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10778318/test-if-a-string-is-regex – Matthew Blancarte Aug 07 '12 at 20:02
1

Also check out: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/172303/is-there-a-regular-expression-to-detect-a-valid-regular-expression – newfurniturey Aug 07 '12 at 20:02
Thanks! I guess a separate question would be whether or not setting track_errors would cause a significant performance hit / other issues. – Anthony Bishopric Aug 07 '12 at 20:06

0 Answers0