Question

I use this function to search arrays:

function search_array ( $array, $term )
    {
       foreach ( $array as $key => $value )
            if ( stipos( $value, $term ) !== false )
            $val = str_replace('"',"",preg_replace("/[a-zA-Z0-9]=/","",$array[$key]));
               if (isset($val)) return $val;
          return false;
    } 

This works well, but I need to make is slightly more restrictive.

 $a = (search_array($l, "7=")); echo "Device ID: $a";

This works, but I only want a match on 7= and NOT 17= or 27= which it’s currently doing.
Any idea how I make this ONLY match on what I enter and not try to expand on it ?

Sorry I should have included this function that I’m using in PHP4.

function stipos($haystack, $needle){

    return strpos($haystack, stristr( $haystack, $needle ));

}

The entrys are similar to ;

1=”Device”, 3=”User”, 7=”ID123456″, 27=”Node” etc

If I’m searching for 7=, I’d expect the returned result to be ID123456

Currently I get 2Node being returned which is take from 27=”Node”

This is an example of how I’m using this :

 $line = "1=\"Device\",3=\"User\",7=\"ID123456\",27=\"Node\"";
 $q = explode(",",str_replace('"','',$line));
 $p = (search_array($q, "7=")); echo "ID : ".$p;

I’m looking to return 7=, but I get the value of 27= and the initial 2 from it, resulting in

ID : 2Node

Not

ID : ID123456

Answer 1

Resolved using :

$line = "1=\"Device\",3=\"User\",7=\"ID123456\",27=\"Node\"";

$value_7 = null;
if(preg_match('#\b7="([^"]*)"#', $line, $matches)) {
    $value_7 = $matches[1];
}
var_dump($value_7);