Question

Need some help with extracting 2 pieces of information from the following string:
viewed MUI slideshow (00:01:45)
Need the MUI and the time, without the (). viewed and slideshow will always be present. The capital lettered word can be anywhere from 2 to 6 letters in length. The time is always in the same format.

The extracted time will be totaled up and averaged for each of the capitalized words.

Any help appreciated. I have never understood RegEX and would love to find a basic starting tutorial if you can point the way.

Answer 1

The following sniplet gives you what you want:

$str = 'viewed MUI slideshow (00:01:45)';
$r = '/viewed\ ([A-Z]{2,6})\ slideshow\ \((\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2})\)/';

if(preg_match($r, $str, $match)) {
   // Do something
   // $match[1] = MUI
   // $match[2] = 00:01:45
}

PHP Manual on PCRE