Regex Not Working

[altendew]

Here is what I am trying to accomplish, I am making a search feature through PHP and MySQL, I am using MYSQL REGEXP feature to search.

I need to make the regex search for fullwords aligned. Meaning...

Lets say there is a entry named "This is alot of fun"

These would match it:

This
This is
This is alot
is alot
of fun

These wouldnt match it

This alot (missing "is")
is fun (missing "alot of")

Here is my php code.

	unset($newSearch);
	$searchStr = preg_quote(rtrim(trim($_POST['search'])), '/');
	$var = preg_split("/\s/", $searchStr);
	$num = count($var);
	$key=1;
	foreach($var as $word)
	{
		if($key=='1')
		{
			$newSearch .= '^(.*\s*)?'.$word;
		}
		else
		{
			$newSearch .= $word;
		}
		if($key!=$num)
		{
			$newSearch .= '[\s]+';
		}
		$key++;
	}
	$newSearch .= '(\s*.*)?$';

I left out the MySQL code because its not important.

Now there is a entry called "Just for (re) FUN (ding)"

In the search box I typed "just for"

$newSearch was "^(.*\s*)?just[\s]+for(\s*.*)?$"

I dont understand why it didnt match?? Please help!!

 

[TrojanWarBlade]

I'm a perl developer rather than php developer but the regex should be similar:

/\b(\w+(\s+\w+)*)\b/

\b is for word boundary
\w is word character (a-z0-9 etc)
brackets are for grouping and capturing.

Hope this helps.


Trojan.

 

[vbkris]

why not use like clause?
...where like '%This is a lot%'

Known is handfull, Unknown is worldfull