Question

I’m trying to wrap my head around regex, but would appreciate some help on this.

The given string is "38min *08min 38 *08min 36 *01min *26 50 *15min *41 *11min *41"

Trying to parse this string in PHP so that:

arr[0] = "38"
arr[1] = "08,38"
arr[2] = "08, 36"
arr[3] = "01, 26, 50"
arr[4] = "15, 41"
arr[5] = "11, 41"

I need an output something like this.

Answer 1

Since the * delimiters seemingly are incoherent, I would use an awfully complex regex for that:

preg_match_all('#
        (\d+)min[\s*]+
        (?:
            (\d+)(?!min|\d)
                (?:
                   [\s*]+(\d+)(?!min|\d)
                )?
        )?#x',
        $string, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER);
print_r($matches);

Gives you:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => 38min *
            [1] => 38
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => 08min 38
            [1] => 08
            [2] => 38
        )

    [2] => Array
        (
            [0] => 08min 36
            [1] => 08
            [2] => 36
        )

    [3] => Array
        (
            [0] => 01min *26 50
            [1] => 01
            [2] => 26
            [3] => 50
        )

    [4] => Array
        (
            [0] => 15min *41
            [1] => 15
            [2] => 41
        )

    [5] => Array
        (
            [0] => 11min *41
            [1] => 11
            [2] => 41
        )

)

You’ll have to reassemble the [1] and [2] and [3] entries for your wanted strings.