Question

I’m attempting to pull a certain part out of different varying strings, and am having a really hard time getting the correct regex to do so. Here are a few examples of what I am trying to pull from:

1. AG055.MA – MAGNUM (Want to return just MA)
2. WI460.16 – SOMETHING (Want to return 16)
3. AG055.QB (Want to return QB)

So basically, I just want to pull the characters after the period, but before the space. Nothing else before or after. Can someone give me a hand with getting the correct regex?

Answer 1

This should work:

<?php
preg_match( '/\.([^ ]+)/', $text, $matches );

print_r( $matches );
?>

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => .MA
    [1] => MA
)

Array
(
    [0] => .16
    [1] => 16
)

Array
(
    [0] => .QB
    [1] => QB
)

The regex is saying find a . character, then get any characters after it that are not a space character. The + makes it only return matches where there is a non-space character after the dot.