Customize regular expression of php

Question

i have a string which is something like

<?php
$string = Monday & SUNDAY 11:30 PM et/pt;
//or
$string = Monday 11:30 PM et/pt;
?>

i want to fetch '11:30 PM' in both the cases for which i guess i cant use explode so what will be the regular expression for this ,,,also please tell me something pretty nice to learn regular expressions. Thanks in advance

It's simple. Did you try anything yet? (Your title says "customize"). * See also [Open source RegexBuddy alternatives](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/89718/is-there) and [Online regex testing](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32282/regex-testing) for some helpful tools, or [RegExp.info](http://regular-expressions.info/) for a nicer tutorial. — mario, Nov 01 '12 at 12:15

Asad Saeeduddin · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-01T12:27:42.450

1

Credit goes to the commenters below for several fixes to the original approach, but there were still some unresolved issues.

If you want a fixed 2 hour format: (0[0-9]|1[0-2]):[0-5]\d [AP]M

edited Nov 01 '12 at 12:27

answered Nov 01 '12 at 12:15

Asad Saeeduddin

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I guess, this should be `[0-2][0-9]` – Olaf Dietsche Nov 01 '12 at 12:18
@PatrickJamesMcDougle this is turning out to be less my answer and more everyone else's. Thanks! – Asad Saeeduddin Nov 01 '12 at 12:22

Kaii · Answer 2 · 2012-11-02T00:04:50.773

1

to validly match a twelve-our-clock i'd use a regex like below. A twelve-hour-clock goes from 01:00 to 12:59:

$regex = "#\b(?:0[0-9]|1[0-2]):[0-5][0-9] [AP]M\b#i";

edited Nov 02 '12 at 00:04

answered Nov 01 '12 at 12:26

Kaii

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The second non-capturing subpattern is not useful because you do not have to locate a set of alternatives. You can also add words boundary to improve the performance of the regexp: `#\b(?:0[0-9]|1[0-2]):[0-5][0-9] [AP]M\b#i` – piouPiouM Nov 01 '12 at 13:14

Igor Savinkin · Answer 3 · 2012-11-02T10:45:59.267

Malik, to retrieve time/date you might use premade library regexes, search this query: http://regexlib.com/Search.aspx?k=digit&c=5&m=-1&ps=20

Basically your time fields are similar, (having the same delimiter ':' ), i'd recommend simple regex: \d{1,2}:\d{2} [PA]M to match in the input string. If you want make it case-insensitive use i, pattern modifier. For the basics of regex welcome to read here.

I give you this match function for PHP (i after second slash (/) makes pattern case-insensitive: am, AM, Am, aM will be equal):

  preg_match('/\d{1,2}:\d{2} [PA]M/i', $string, $time);
  print ($time);

If there might not be a space after digits (ex. 11:30am) or more then one space char., then the regex should look like this: /\d{1,2}:\d{2}\s*[PA]M/i

score -1 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 01 '12 at 12:30

-1

this code will give you 11:30 PM

preg_match('$([0-9:]{3,5}) ([AP])M$','Monday & SUNDAY 11:30 PM et/pt',$m);
echo $m['1']." ".$m['2']."M";

answered Nov 01 '12 at 12:30

MC_delta_T

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Slight problem with a `$` at the beginning. Perhaps you meant `^` – Asad Saeeduddin Nov 01 '12 at 12:33
no i meant $. what is the problem? you can use any non-alphanumeric character for delimiter. – MC_delta_T Nov 01 '12 at 12:35
your regex matches 99:99 PM, 9:999 AM, 9:9 AM and 000:0 PM. seems wrong. – Kaii Nov 01 '12 at 12:37
@MC_delta_T Yeah sorry, I mistook the first and last `$` for anchor tokens. @kai, also matches `::: PM` – Asad Saeeduddin Nov 01 '12 at 12:38
i didnt say/thought any validation issue. this is the simplest solution for this problem. if we think on it, can add a lot of code. i think no need too much complexity. – MC_delta_T Nov 01 '12 at 13:01

Customize regular expression of php

4 Answers4