Question

I have such text:

<[e-mail]> If you do so, please include this problem report. 
<[e-mail]> You can delete your

own
text from the attached returned message.

                   The mail system

<[e-mail]>: connect to *.net[82.*.86.*]: Connection timed
out

I have to parse email from it. Could you help me with this job?

---

upd

There could be another email addresses in <%here%>. There should be connection between ‘The mail system’ text. I need in email which goes after that text.

Answer 1

Considering this text is stored in $text, what about this :

$matches = array();
if (preg_match('/<([^>]+)>/', $text, $matches)) {
  var_dump($matches[1]);
}

Which gives me :

string '[e-mail]' (length=13)

Basically, I used a pretty simple regex, that matches :

• a < character
• anything that’s not a > character : [^>]
  • at least one time : [^>]+
  • capturing it : ([^>]+)
• a > character

So, it captures anything that’s between < and >.

Edit after comments+edit of the OP :

If you only want the e-mail address that’s after The mail system, you could use this :

$matches = array();
if (preg_match('/The mail system\s*<([^>]+)>/', $text, $matches)) {
  var_dump($matches[1]);
}

In addition to what I posted before, this expects :

• The string The mail system
• Any number of white-characters : \s*