Question

I am looking for some help with regex.

I have this piece of code:

$router->add( 
    '/activate/{token:[a-zA-Z0-9]+}', 
    array (
        'module' => 'frontend',
        'controller' => 'user',
        'action'     => 'activate'
    )
);

which works just fine. However the one below does not:

$router->add( 
    '/activate/{token:[a-zA-Z0-9]{32}}', 
    array (
        'module' => 'frontend',
        'controller' => 'user',
        'action'     => 'activate'
    )
);

The matching mechanism that I have in C is (which works with preg_match_all also)

'#{([a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9\_\-]*)(:([^}]+))*}#'

I would appreciate some pointers as to how to make the second example work.

EDIT

preg_match_all(
    '#{([a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9\_\-]*)(:([^}]+))*}#',
    '/manual/{language:[a-z]{2}}/{file:[a-z]+}.html',
    $matches,
    PREG_SET_ORDER
);

I want it to return something like this:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => {language:[a-z]{2}}
            [1] => language
            [2] => :[a-z]{2}
            [3] => [a-z]{2}
        )
    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => {file:[a-z]+}
            [1] => file
            [2] => :[a-z]+
            [3] => [a-z]+
        )
)

Answer 1

This regular expression: ‘#{([a-zA-Z0-9_-])(:(.)}?)}#’ works for both of them:

<?php

preg_match_all(
    '#{([a-zA-Z0-9\_\-]*)(:([^}]+}?))*}#',
    '/activate/{token:[a-zA-Z0-9]{32}}',
    $matches,
    PREG_SET_ORDER
);
print_r($matches);

preg_match_all(
    '#{([a-zA-Z0-9\_\-]*)(:([^}]+}?))*}#',
    '/activate/{token:[a-zA-Z0-9]+}',
    $matches,
    PREG_SET_ORDER
);
print_r($matches);