RegEx Partial string matching

Question

Is it possible in PHP Regex to do partial matching so that if I have an array like:

$words = array("john", "steve", "amie", "kristy", "steven");

and I supply "jo" it would return "john" or if "eve" is supplied, it returns "steve"?

because when a search term is supplied, it should return a best match. strpos requires I know the word to compare against — dukevin, Feb 10 '12 at 08:20
You just said the word to compare against was `jo`. So iterate over the array and see where `strpos()` doesn't return `False`. I fail to see the problem. — Tim Pietzcker, Feb 10 '12 at 08:21

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 10 '12 at 08:21

1

If you only need to find a substring, either use strpos (for case-sensitive search) or stripos for case-insensitive search.

If you need regex, then you can specify wildcards at both ends: /.*jo.*/ which will force it to always match "dojo", "jo", "joe", "dojos", etc.

To search in an array for your pattern, look at preg_grep - this lets you pass in a regex (/.*jo.*/) as the first parameter, and an array as the second ($words), and returns any elements which match your regex.

answered Feb 10 '12 at 08:21

Joe

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That just makes processing the regular expression more expensive. – Gumbo Feb 10 '12 at 08:41
I don't think he's worried about efficiency, from the answer he's accepted – Joe Feb 10 '12 at 08:43
That doesn’t mean you should propose inefficient solutions. – Gumbo Feb 10 '12 at 09:15
Well I'm sorry for trying to offer advice. I'll know better next time. – Joe Feb 10 '12 at 09:21

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 10 '12 at 08:29

1

$words = array("john","jogi", "steve", "amie", "kristy", "steven");
foreach ($words as $value) {
    if (preg_match("|jo|", $value)) {
        $arr[] = $value;
    }
}
var_dump($arr);

This will return you array with john and jogi

answered Feb 10 '12 at 08:29

Poonam

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it is working , tell me one thing for eve will return steve and steven na? or you want only first match answer would be returned.. – Poonam Feb 10 '12 at 09:52
did you see the codepad link? I used codepad to execute your php code and it returns "null" and several warnings – dukevin Feb 10 '12 at 09:58
I am sorry @dukevin ,I don't know why its not working in codepad ,but I am bit confident it is working in php ,I have tested using netbeans and php. – Poonam Feb 10 '12 at 10:05
I found some post based on warning just go through it http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8859363/warning-preg-match-internal-pcre-fullinfo – Poonam Feb 10 '12 at 10:09

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 10 '12 at 08:22

0

You could iterate through your array and match your items using preg_match.
If you don't supply a ^ and $ it automatically does partial matching.

answered Feb 10 '12 at 08:22

Marc-Christian Schulze

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RegEx Partial string matching

3 Answers3