Regular Expressions (Specifically preg_split() PHP)

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I’m listing out some dates in my PHP application which results in something like the following:

April2016May2016June2016 etc.

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I’m trying to use preg_split to format them like this:

array('April 2016', 'May 2016', 'June 2016')

I used an online Regular Expression editor to determine how to detect for 4 consecutive numbers and here’s how far I’ve gotten:

Note: I am also removing all white space – ideally this would be better if it only removed white space if there were more than 2 spaces i.e. hello world would not be altered but hello world would.

preg_split('/dddd/g', preg_replace('!s+!', '', $sidebar_contents));

Using the above, I get an error suggesting that the g identifier is not valid assuming because it’s not preg_match_all – removing the g result in the following:

enter image description here

Thanks for any help!

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3 comments

  1. Here is a way to achieve what you want with 1 call to preg_match_all and using an array_map after:

    preg_match_all('~(p{L}+)(d+)~', "April2016May2016June2016", $m);
$result = array_map(function($k, $v) { return $k . " " . $v; }, $m[1], $m[2]);
print_r($result);

    See the regex demo and an IDEONE demo.

    The pattern means:

    • (p{L}+) – match and capture into Group 1 (will be accessible after matching via $m[1]) one or more letters
    • (d+) – match and capture into Group 2 (will be accessible after matching via $m[2]) one or more digits.

    With array_map, we just join the values from Group 1 and 2 with a space.

    Alternative: fill out the resulting array inside a preg_replace_callback (just one pass!):

    $result = array();
preg_replace_callback('~(p{L}+)(d+)~', function($m) use (&$result) {
    array_push($result, $m[1] . " " . $m[2]);
}, "April2016May2016June2016");
print_r($result);

    See the IDEONE demo.

  2. You can insert the space and then split:

    <?php
$input = "April2016May2016June2016";
var_dump(preg_split('/(?<=d)(?!d|$)/i',
  preg_replace('/(?<!d)(?=d)/', ' ', $input)));
?>

    Outputs:

    array(3) {
  [0]=>
  string(10) "April 2016"
  [1]=>
  string(8) "May 2016"
  [2]=>
  string(9) "June 2016"
}

  3. Try this:

    $str = "April2016May2016June2016"; 
preg_match_all("/[a-z]+\s\d+/i", preg_replace("/([a-z]+)(\d+)/i", "$1 $2", $str), $matches);
print_r($matches[0]);

    Output:

    Array
(
    [0] => April 2016
    [1] => May 2016
    [2] => June 2016
)

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