Question

I have a string that can be very long and contain various lines and characters.

I am wanting to extract all lines that are surrounded by SB & EB:

SB1EB
SBa description of various lengthEB
SB123.456.78EB
SB99.99EB
SB99.99EB
SB2EB
SBanother description of various lengthEB
SB123.456.00EB
SB199.99EB
SB199.99EB
3
another description of various length that I don't want to return
123.456.00
599.99
599.99
SB60EB
SBanother description of various length that i want to keepEB
SB500.256.10EB
SB0.99EB
SB0.99EB
another bit of text that i don't want - can span multiple lines

This is the pattern I am using in PHP:

preg_match_all('/SB(\d+)EB\nSB(\w.*)EB\nSB(\d{3}\.\d{3}\.\d{2})EB\nSB(\d.*)EB\nSB(\d.*)EB\n/', $string, $matches)

So this should hopefully return:

[0] -> SB1EB
SBa description of various lengthEB
SB123.456.78EB
SB99.99EB
SB99.99EB

[1] -> SB2EB
SBanother description of various lengthEB
SB123.456.00EB
SB199.99EB
SB199.99EB

[2] -> SB60EB
SBanother description of various length that i want to keepEB
SB500.256.10EB
SB0.99EB
SB0.99EB

But I’m obviously doing something wrong because it isn’t matching anything. Can somebody help please?

SOLUTION:

Based on @Sajid reply:

if (preg_match_all('/(?:SB.+?EB(?:[\r\n]+|$))/', $string, $result)) {

    for($i=0;$i<count($result[0]);$i++){

        $single_item = $result[0][$i];
        $single_item = str_replace("SB","",$single_item);
        $single_item = str_replace("EB","",$single_item);
        if (preg_match('/(\d{3}\.\d{3}\.\d{2})/', $single_item)) {

            $id = $single_item;
            $qty = $result[0][$i-2];
            $name = $result[0][$i-1];
            $price = $result[0][$i+1];
            $total = $result[0][$i+2];

        }

    }

}

It’s a bit messy, but it works! 🙂

Thanks

Answer 1

Based on @Sajid reply:

if (preg_match_all('/(?:SB.+?EB(?:[\r\n]+|$))/', $string, $result))
{
    for ($i=0; $i<count($result[0]); $i++)
    {
        $single_item = $result[0][$i];
        $single_item = str_replace("SB","",$single_item);
        $single_item = str_replace("EB","",$single_item);
        if (preg_match('/(\d{3}\.\d{3}\.\d{2})/', $single_item))
        {
            $id = $single_item;
            $qty = $result[0][$i-2];
            $name = $result[0][$i-1];
            $price = $result[0][$i+1];
            $total = $result[0][$i+2];
        }
    }
}

It’s a bit messy, but it works! 🙂