Question

I have a RegExp Tester extension in chrome. Running pattern [-,] against search text

“james,bayo -is a good boy” returns 2 matches

however running a preg_match as below in php returns false

<?php
 preg_match("[,-]", "james,bayo -is a good boy");
?>

Expecting it to return 2 as did the regExp tester,
I am sure i am missing something

Answer 1

You need regex delimiters, like so:

preg_match("/[,-]/", "james,bayo -is a good boy", $matches);
var_dump( $matches);

This will match one of two characters – The comma, or the dash. Also, in order to retrieve the matches, you need to specify the 3rd parameter to preg_match(), as that it where your matches will be stored.

Note that since you’re using preg_match(), you’ll only get the first match. So, as is, this will output:

array(1) {
  [0]=>
  string(1) ","
}

If you want all of the matches, you need to use preg_match_all(), like this:

preg_match_all("/[,-]/", "james,bayo -is a good boy", $matches);
var_dump( $matches);

This outputs:

array(1) {
  [0]=>
  array(2) {
    [0]=>
    string(1) ","
    [1]=>
    string(1) "-"
  }
}