Question

I am attempting to extract all instances of a particular format from a string:

I am wondering if my new Sony [PT# 123456ABC; Sony] has this feature but my friend says the new Toshiba [PT# AD-3232hjk; Toshiba] has this feature.

I would like to extract:

[PT# 123456ABC; Sony]

[PT# AD-3232hjk; Toshiba]

As you can see here, the only items in the consistent positions are:

• [PT#
• ;
• ]

I was attempting to use various types of strpos() but because of the varying lengths and formats of the part numbers and manufacturer names I was unable to reliably pull out those instances from a much larger string. I have been trying various ways to use regular expressions to solve this however my knowledge with them is fairly limited. After I have these expressions extracted and placed into variables I will then need to separate the part numbers and manufacturer names from the expression. This may also be easier to accomplish using regular expressions.

Any help is appreciated.
Thanks

Answer 1

I think this would do it

preg_match_all( "/(\[PT#\s+.*?;\s+.*?\])/", $input, $matches );

print_r( $matches );

Altternatively, if you just wanted to capture the unique information

preg_match_all( "/\[PT#\s+(.*?);\s+(.*?)\]/", $input, $matches );