String): preg_match ( '/cow$/', 'Dave was a cowhand' ) // returns false preg_match ( '/cow$/', 'Don't have a cow' ) // returns trueĮxpression matches any single character: preg_match ( '/c.t/', 'cat' ) // returns true preg_match ( '/c.t/', 'cut' ) // returns true preg_match ( '/c.t/', 'c t' ) // returns true preg_match ( '/c.t/', 'bat' ) // returns false preg_match ( '/c.t/', 'ct' ) // returns false String (i.e., anchors the regular expression to the end of the The end of a regular expression means that it must match the end of the The string): preg_match ( '/^cow/', 'Dave was a cowhand' ) // returns false preg_match ( '/^cow/', 'cowabunga!' ) // returns true Some characters have special meanings in regular expressions.īeginning of a regular expression indicates that it must match theīeginning of the string (or, more precisely,Īnchors the regular expression to the beginning of Most characters in a regular expression are literal characters, Perl regular expressions act on arbitrary binary data, so youĬan safely match with patterns or strings that contain the NUL-byte Provide almost complete support for Perl’s arsenal of regular expressionįeatures. Perl has long been considered the benchmark for powerful regularĮxpressions. For instance, preg_match() does a regular expression There are three uses for regular expressions: matching, which canĪlso be used to extract information from a string substituting new textįor matching text and splitting a string into an array of smaller chunks.

Whether there was a match, while others make changes to the string. See if any of the string matches the pattern. Regular expression functions compare that pattern to another string and A regularĮxpression is a string that represents a pattern. Previous methods provide, you can use regular expressions. If you need more complex searching functionality than the

Regular expression tab rapid php