Question

A system message may include the following status sentence:

This function was executed 312 times, most often used by process Urbanus: 16.06.2012 14:10.

The sentence always is in one line.

I need to:

1. Retrieve the three bold parts:
   • An integer between 1 and n (here: 312)
   • A string consisting of characters, symbols (incl. whitespaces but excl. newline) and numbers (here: Urbanus)
   • A date which is either “Today” or “Yesterday” or a date in DD.MM.YYYY (here: 16.06.2012)
   • A time in 24hrs hh:mm format (here: 14:10)
2. Remove the whole sentence from the system message.

I tried the following, but it’s not working:

$matches = preg_replace(
"/This function was executed ([1-9]|[1-9][0-9]|[1-9][0-9][0-9]) times, most often used by process (.+?): ((Today|Yesterday|[0-9]{2}.[0-9]{2}.[0-9]{4}) ([0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}))./iU", 
"", 
$message);

Answer 1

1part:

Try use preg_match_all. Also I improve your pattern

$message = 'This function was executed 312 times, most often used by process Urbanus: 16.06.2012 14:10.';

$matches = array();
if (preg_match_all("/This function was executed ([1-9]|[1-9][0-9]+) times, most often used by process (\w+?): ((Today|Yesterday|[0-9]{2}.[0-9]{2}.[0-9]{4}) ([0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}))./i", $message, $matches)) {
    var_dump($matches);
}