Question

I need a regular expression what would search at the beginning of my string if there is a number followed a percent sign and extract it.

$string = "20% - some text";

preg_match('/^[0-9]+%$/',$string);

should return 20%

Answer 1

You should use the $matches argument:

$string = "20% - some text";
$matches = array();
if (preg_match('/^([0-9]+%)/', $string, $matches)) {
     print_r($matches);
}