Question

Following this post I am attempting the same task, however the regex given below is giving me conflicting results:

$text = "Jiaaah.. RT @mizter_popo";

$pattern = "/(^|[ ])(\RT(?=\s))/";

if(preg_match($pattern, $text)) {
    echo "correct";
} else {
    echo "wrong";
}

I am expected this to give ‘correct’. Running this in a PHP script on my local server and here returns ‘wrong’. Running the same logic here returns ‘correct’? Can anyone help explain what is going on? Or maybe I am wrong to expect ‘correct’ to be echoed?

Answer 1

For me, removing the \ before the RT works on both in this specific instance:

$pattern = "/(^|[ ])(RT(?=\s))/";

It is possible the regex tester site are doing some heavy sanitisation to make sure people don’t break their site, which may skew what works and what doesn’t.