Question

I want to parse some text that start with ":" and could be surround with parentheses to stop the match so:

"abcd:(someText)efgh" and

"abcd:someText"

will return someText.

but i have a problem to set the parentheses optionnal.

I make this but it does not works:

$reg = '#:([\\(]){0,1}([a-z]+)$1#i';

$v = 'abc:(someText)def';

var_dump(preg_match($reg,$v,$matches));

var_dump($matches);

The $1 makes it failed.

i don’t know how to tell him :

If there is a “(” at the beginning, there must be “)” at the end.

Answer 1

This regex will match either :word or :(word) groups 1 and 2 hold the respective results.

if (preg_match('/:([a-z]+)|\(([a-z]+)\)/i', $subject, $regs)) {
$result = ($regs[1])?$regs[1]:$regs[2];
} else {
$result = "";
}