Question

I have a text file with multiple occurrences of tables like show below:

_____________________________________
Heading 1       | Heading 2
_______________ | ___________________
Label1 18857.10 | Label3 710.00
Label2 2361.50  | Label4 0.00
                | Label5 2531.37
                | Label6 0.00
                | Label7 0.00
                | Label8 0.01
________________| ___________________
       16495.60 | Label9 3969.06
_______________ | ___________________

I want to store the numerical values into variables using regular expressions. Since I’m new to regular expressions, I couldn’t find a way to do it. Can anyone help me with this?

Answer 1

$table="_____________________________________
Heading 1       | Heading 2
_______________ | ___________________
Label1 18857.10 | Label3 710.00
Label2 2361.50  | Label4 0.00
                | Label5 2531.37
                | Label6 0.00
                | Label7 0.00
                | Label8 0.01
________________| ___________________
       16495.60 | Label9 3969.06
_______________ | ___________________
";

$num = preg_match_all('/(\w+) (\d+(\.\d+)?)/', $table, $result);


for($i=0; $i<$num; $i++){
  echo "{$result[1][$i]} = {$result[2][$i]}<br>";
}

If your table is exactly what you showed, this works.

regex: /(\w+) (\d+(\.\d+)?)/

Slashes / at the begining and end are delimiting the regex.

(\w+) means, “match any letter,number or underscore once or more times

one space follows, you can add + after the space, to match more then one, or put \s instead of space, to match any white character, like tab for example..

(\d+(\.\d+)?) … \d+ means one or more digits, (\.\d+) means dot followed by one or more digits, question mark means that the previous parenthesis (\.\d+) is optional.

Preg_match_all stores those matches in third parameter and returns number of matches. In $result[$i][0] is the whole match, $result[$i][1] is first sub-expression (\w+), $result[$i][2] is second parenthesis (\d+(\.\d+)?), $result[$i][3] is the decimal part (\.\d+), it is inside $result[$i][2], but you don’t need $result[$i][3], just for explanation 🙂

The code prints:

Heading = 1
Heading = 2
Label1 = 18857.10
Label3 = 710.00
Label2 = 2361.50
Label4 = 0.00
Label5 = 2531.37
Label6 = 0.00
Label7 = 0.00
Label8 = 0.01
Label9 = 3969.06

edit: sorry, it doesn’t work, it didn’t match that naked 16495.60 value. Let me think a bit more…

…

$regex='/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)? +(\d+(\.\d+)?)/';

is bit better, here’s how it works:

• [a-zA-Z0-9]+ matches non-zero ammount of letters or numbers
• ? after parenthesis means, the whole parenthesis expression is optional.
• + one or more spaces
• (\d+(\.\d+)?) non-zero ammount of digits followed by optional { dot and another non-zero ammount of digits }

This whole regex does not include | or new-line, so all matching should happen in only one field of the table.

The result variable should be:

array (size=4)
  0 => 
    array (size=12)
      0 => string 'Heading 1' (length=9)
      1 => string 'Heading 2' (length=9)
      2 => string 'Label1 18857.10' (length=15)
      3 => string 'Label3 710.00' (length=13)
      4 => string 'Label2 2361.50' (length=14)
      5 => string 'Label4 0.00' (length=11)
      6 => string 'Label5 2531.37' (length=14)
      7 => string 'Label6 0.00' (length=11)
      8 => string 'Label7 0.00' (length=11)
      9 => string 'Label8 0.01' (length=11)
      10 => string '           16495.60' (length=19)
      11 => string 'Label9 3969.06' (length=14)
  1 => 
    array (size=12)
      0 => string 'Heading' (length=7)
      1 => string 'Heading' (length=7)
      2 => string 'Label1' (length=6)
      3 => string 'Label3' (length=6)
      4 => string 'Label2' (length=6)
      5 => string 'Label4' (length=6)
      6 => string 'Label5' (length=6)
      7 => string 'Label6' (length=6)
      8 => string 'Label7' (length=6)
      9 => string 'Label8' (length=6)
      10 => string '' (length=0)
      11 => string 'Label9' (length=6)
  2 => 
    array (size=12)
      0 => string '1' (length=1)
      1 => string '2' (length=1)
      2 => string '18857.10' (length=8)
      3 => string '710.00' (length=6)
      4 => string '2361.50' (length=7)
      5 => string '0.00' (length=4)
      6 => string '2531.37' (length=7)
      7 => string '0.00' (length=4)
      8 => string '0.00' (length=4)
      9 => string '0.01' (length=4)
      10 => string '16495.60' (length=8)
      11 => string '3969.06' (length=7)
  3 => 
    array (size=12)
      0 => string '' (length=0)
      1 => string '' (length=0)
      2 => string '.10' (length=3)
      3 => string '.00' (length=3)
      4 => string '.50' (length=3)
      5 => string '.00' (length=3)
      6 => string '.37' (length=3)
      7 => string '.00' (length=3)
      8 => string '.00' (length=3)
      9 => string '.01' (length=3)
      10 => string '.60' (length=3)
      11 => string '.06' (length=3)

edit2: GRAB THOSE SNIPPETS AGAIN! There should be a backslash before the dot, in (\.\d+)!!! I formated it wrong and it disappeared.** Rewrote it, should be fine now.