Question

I have a regular expression

|^(/[a-z]{2})?/?(php)/([-a-z0-9]+)/?/?$|

Which match /php/anything.

Now I want a regular expression which match both

/php/anything
/java/anything

I tired |^(/[a-z]{2})?/?(php|java)/([-a-z0-9]+)/?/?$| but its not working.

Can someone help me with solution?
I want to keep all other part but change just (php) part.

Here is the code

preg_match("|^(/[a-z]{2})?/?(php|java)/([-a-z0-9]+)/?/?$|", 'php/anything')

But I get this warning and match doesn’t work

Warning: preg_match(): Unknown modifier 'j' 

Thanks

Answer 1

You are using | as the regex delimiter but you have a | inside the regex as alteration, which you need to escape. If you don’t the 2nd | is treated as the end of regex and the letter following it j is treated as regex modifier. Since j is not a valid modifier, you get the error.

You escape the | as:

preg_match("|^(/[a-z]{2})?/?(php\|java)/([-a-z0-9]+)/?/?$|", 'php/anything')
                                ^

Or you can use a different pair of delimiter:

preg_match("~^(/[a-z]{2})?/?(php|java)/([-a-z0-9]+)/?/?$~", 'php/anything')
            ^                                           ^