Question

I want to match strings like those below.

abc|q:1,f:2
cba|q:1,f:awd2,t:3awd,h:gr

I am using php and have tried both preg_match and preg_match_all with this expression.

/^([a-z]+)\|([a-z]+:[a-z0-9]+,?)+$/iU

This only returns the first part before the pipe, and one a:1. What am I doing wrong, why is it behaving this way and how can I make it work?

Answer 1

/^([a-z]+)\|((?:[a-z]+:[a-z0-9]+,?)+)$/iU

would capture:

• the part before the pipe
• the part after the part

The greedy nature of the ‘+’ quantifier make your capturing group ([a-z]+:[a-z0-9]+,?) only capture the last set of characters matching this regex.

/(?ms)^((?:[a-z]+)\|(?:[a-z]+:[a-z0-9]+,?)+)$/iU

would capture the all line.

Note the ‘?:‘ to avoid creating any capturing group.