Matching operator:term and operator: term with PHP search operators

Question

I am using the answer I found on this question to allow me to have search operators.

The one issue with it is that it requires that there are no spaces between then operator and the words.

So it will match operator:something but not operator: something so what I am wondering is how I can match either form?

preg_match_all('/
  (?:
    ([^: ]+) # command
    : # trailing ":"
  )
  (
    [^: ]+  # 1st word
    (?:\s+[^: ]+\b(?!:))* # possible other words, starts with spaces, does not end with ":"
  )
  /x',
  $search, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER);

  $result = array();
  foreach($matches as $match) {
      $result[$match[1]] = isset($result[$match[1]]) 
          ? $result[$match[1]] . ' ' . $match[2] 
          : $match[2];
  }

What you have made change in the code provided by Savannah you are just asking the answer without working on this — M Khalid Junaid, Aug 01 '13 at 20:38
You must post the input string and the expected output, not a link to bad written post. Thanks. — Casimir et Hippolyte, Aug 01 '13 at 20:51

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 01 '13 at 20:40

1

4th line

:\ ? # trailing ":" or ": "

answered Aug 01 '13 at 20:40

klkvsk

670
4
7

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 01 '13 at 20:42

1

:\s*

\s is a flag for white-spaces, * means 0 or more

answered Aug 01 '13 at 20:42

Hubu

59
2

Matching operator:term and operator: term with PHP search operators

2 Answers2