Question

I’m looking for a function that do the same as SQL LIKE statements :

$match = match('abcdefg', 'a_c*fg');

where “_” represent one char and “*” multiple.

I need to replace theses char with a regex part like “.+” for “*” but i should before it escape regex chars with preg_quote excepts theses two “_” and “*”.

Is there a simple way to do it ?

Answer 1

take a look at fnmatch function

OR

like('goo*','google.com');      -->  strpos('goo','google.com') === 0

The next one, you can use strpos:

like('*gl*','google.com');      -->  strpos('gl', 'google.com') !== false;

The next you can just use equals:

like('google.com','google.com') -->  'google.com' == 'google.com'

Of course, you can use regex for all of them:

like('goo*','google.com');      -->  preg_match('#^goo.*$#','google.com') 
like('*gl*','google.com');      -->  preg_match('#^.*gl.*$#', 'google.com');
like('google.com','google.com') -->  preg_match('#^google\.com$#', 'google.com')

to convert your patterns to regex, place a ^ at the beginning, and a $ at the end, then replace * with .* and escape .s.