Find all characters with "[string]" and make it into an array of data

Question

I have some of this text value like

$str = 'A quick [color] [animal] [action] over the lazy dog.';

I want to find all the data with this "[" and "]" so if I have a long text ill just do [phone_number] or something. Can I achieve this into an array value?

My wanted output:

$array = ('[color]','[animal]','[action]');

cause I will use this later on for str_replace(). Is there anyway to do this?

Thank you for your help

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 01 '18 at 01:27

2

You want to use preg_match_all:

$str = "A quick [color] [animal] [action] over the lazy dog.";
preg_match_all("/\[[^\]]*\]/", $str, $matches);
echo json_encode($matches); // [["[color]","[animal]","[action]"]]

answered Jun 01 '18 at 01:27

caitlin

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this actually works! Thanks! – Qing Fei De Yi Jun 01 '18 at 01:32
what about if I do `_this_` instead of `[this]` ? – Qing Fei De Yi Jun 01 '18 at 01:41
In that case, use `preg_match_all("/\_[^\]]*\_/", $text, $match);` – caitlin Jun 01 '18 at 01:43
why do I also get the data with \ in them too? – Qing Fei De Yi Jun 01 '18 at 01:44

Find all characters with "[string]" and make it into an array of data

1 Answers1