Question

I am using RegEx Helper website (http://regexpal.com/), and

ENTER.+Security

is matching the following:

ENTER Open-Source Intelligence Team LSU Center for Animal Health, Food Safety, and Bio-Security

However, PHP will not preg_match it, and I cannot figure it out, I have been trying for a couple of hours now, and I feel really stupid that I can’t get this little piece to match.

Is it apparent to anybody why? I have tried all kinds of combinations but, the most I can get it to match it ENTER. This is especially frustrating because this is my shortest and simplest RegEx by far, but it just will not match.

Code:

$title = '/(ENTER.+Security)/';


$file = shell_exec('pdf2txt.py docs/April.pdf');
preg_match_all($title, $file, $m);

print_r($m[0]);

When I remove the preg_match part, and I just print the $file, there are dozens of visual matches, but it just won’t match it programatically.

All I see is this:

Array ( ) 

But the text it should be matching is here:

…
/March/17031101.asp (accessed April 4, 2011). World Health Organization. State Food
and Drug Administration Gets WHO Approval for Vaccine Regulatory System. March 1,
2011. http://www.wpro.who.int/china/media_centre/press_releases/PR_20110301.htm
(accessed April 4, 2011). ENTER Open-Source Intelligence Team LSU Center for Animal
Health, Food Safety, and Bio-Security Special Interest Intelligence Report – Alert
South Korea – Labeling Issues in Wheat Flour Mix Product…

Answer 1

Try accounting for multiple lines. There’s a good chance when you are pasting it into that site that it’s removing any line breaks.

preg_match('/ENTER.+Security/m',$str) //note the /m

The forward slash in the example is the delimeter. The following m tells it to match over multiple lines.