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up vote 7 down vote favorite

I've read multiple tutorials on regex but it just won't stick in my head. I can never get my patterns to work. Hope someone can help.

I have a php variable ($content) where I need to find a certain pattern that looks like this

[gallery::name/of/the/folder/]

I would like to search:

- starting with "[gallery::"
- any other character (variable length)
- ending with "]"

So far, in PHP I have:

   preg_match('/\[gallery\:/', $content, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);

I can find [gallery: but that's it. I would like to be able to find the rest (:name/of/the/folder/])

Any help is appreciated! Thanks!

share|improve this question

2 Answers 2

up vote 16 down vote accepted

Try capturing it:

preg_match("/\[gallery::(.*?)]/",$content,$m);

Now $m is an array:

0 => [gallery::/name/of/the/folder/]
1 => /name/of/the/folder/
share|improve this answer
    
If the string is 'starting with' something, make sure to prepend a '^' character to "\[gallery" –  AndrewPK Apr 13 '12 at 14:29
    
wouldn't multiple occurences ([gallery::/name/of/the/folder/][gallery::/name/of/the/folder/]) cause problems with using a greedy capture on all characters? –  Tim Hoolihan Apr 13 '12 at 14:30
1  
@TimHoolihan it is a non-greedy capture –  nathanjosiah Apr 13 '12 at 14:31
1  
@nathanjosiah Using a + is a valid answer too, but since it was supposed to be "any length" I figured 0 was included - after all, what if the path were the empty string (in other words, the current directory)? –  Niet the Dark Absol Apr 13 '12 at 14:34
1  
Are you sure you're typing the path in the right place? Might be a silly question, but there's no reason why a / in the search string would fail to match this regex. –  Niet the Dark Absol Apr 13 '12 at 14:40
up vote 0 down vote

change your regex to 

'/\[gallery::([A-Za-z\/]+)\]/'

Since I put the folder/path part in parenthesis, you should get a capture group out of it.

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Needs another :, which doesn't need escaping, and if you need to match / you should use another delimiter character like # –  DaveRandom Apr 13 '12 at 14:29
    
[A-Za-z] for one thing only matches one character, but it does not match "all characters" - and certainly not the ones allowed in filenames. –  Niet the Dark Absol Apr 13 '12 at 14:32
    
@Kolink, note the + sign after the parens –  Tim Hoolihan Apr 13 '12 at 14:34
    
@TimHoolihan Yes, there is a +, but that will only work if each path element is one char long (ie a/b/c/d, not abcd/efg). Also, only the first (or last, not sure how it works) matched subpattern gets returned with that regex. –  Niet the Dark Absol Apr 13 '12 at 14:35
    
@Kolink, you're right, I fixed the location of the plus sign and tested on nregex.com, working now –  Tim Hoolihan Apr 13 '12 at 14:38

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