Question

I was just helped in another thread with a regex that has been verified to work. I can see it actually working on Rubular but when I plug the regex into preg_match, I get absolutely nothing.

Here is the regex with my preg_match function:

    preg_match('/^!!([0-9]{5}) +.*? +[MF] ([0-9]{3})([0-9]{3})([A-Z]{3})([A-Z]{3}) + ([A-Z])[0-9]{3}([0-9]{4})([0-9]{2})([0-9]{2})/', $res, $matches);

All I am getting is an empty array returned.

Answer 1

The problem is that you have added two extra spaces into the regular expression that should not be there and that cause the match to fail.

/^!!([0-9]{5}) +.*? +[MF] ([0-9]{3})([0-9]{3})([A-Z]{3})([A-Z]{3}) + ([A-Z])...
                         ^                                          ^
                       here                                       and here

Whitespace is significant (by default) in regular expressions. A space in a regular expression matches a space in the target string. Removing these two spaces fixes the problem.

See it working on ideone (this time it is a PHP example).

array(10) {
  [0]=>
  string(39) "!!92519 C 01 M600200BLNBRN D55420090205"
  [1]=>
  string(5) "92519"
  [2]=>
  string(3) "600"
  [3]=>
  string(3) "200"
  [4]=>
  string(3) "BLN"
  [5]=>
  string(3) "BRN"
  [6]=>
  string(1) "D"
  [7]=>
  string(4) "2009"
  [8]=>
  string(2) "02"
  [9]=>
  string(2) "05"
}