escaping slashes in preg_match

[dbrb2]

Hello,

I'm having some trouble with my regular expressions...
I want to match a date using preg match, where the delimiter may be one of either " ", "/","-","." or "\"

$dateMatch = '/^\s*([0-9]{1,2})[//// \\\.-]+([0-9]{1,2})[//// \\\.-]*([0-9]{0,4})/';
  
preg_match($dateMatch,$str,$match);

I tried the above patten, with no joy. I think the problem lies with my escaping of forward and back slashes... any ideas?

 

[feherke]

Hi

Use backslash ( \ ) to escape the slashes ( / ) :

$dateMatch = '/^\s*([0-9]{1,2})[[COLOR=red pink]\[/color]/ \\.-]+([0-9]{1,2})[[COLOR=red pink]\[/color]/ \\.-]*([0-9]{0,4})/';

Or just use a different delimiter for the regular expression :

$dateMatch = '[COLOR=red pink]#[/color]^\s*([0-9]{1,2})[/ \\.-]+([0-9]{1,2})[/ \\.-]*([0-9]{0,4})[COLOR=red pink]#[/color]';

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[jpadie]

but there are (much) better ways to match a date... for example checkdate() (separate the date parts with split or explode). or use strototime() (or any other method).

 

[feherke]

Hi

Hmm... I thought that "date" was a typo and dbrb2 wanted to write "data".

Such regular expression would match for example [tt]' 0-----0 '[/tt] too.

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/