Question

Okay, I have the following PHP code to extract an email address of the following two forms:

Random Stranger <[e-mail]>
[e-mail]

Here is the PHP code:

// The first example
$sender = "Random Stranger <[e-mail]>";

$pattern = '/([\w_-]*@[\w-\.]*)|.*<([\w_-]*@[\w-\.]*)>/';

preg_match($pattern,$sender,$matches,PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);

echo "<pre>";
print_r($matches);
echo "</pre><hr>";

// The second example
$sender = "[e-mail]";

preg_match($pattern,$sender,$matches,PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);

echo "<pre>";
print_r($matches);
echo "</pre>";

My question is… what is in $matches? It seems to be a strange collection of arrays. Which index holds the match from the parenthesis? How can I be sure I’m getting the email address and only the email address?

Update:

Here is the output:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => Random Stranger 
            [1] => 0
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => 
            [1] => -1
        )

    [2] => Array
        (
            [0] => [e-mail]
            [1] => 5
        )

)
Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => [e-mail]
            [1] => 0
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => [e-mail]
            [1] => 0
        )

)

Answer 1

This doesn’t help you with your preg question but it will simplify your code. Since those are the only 2 options, dont use regular expressions

echo end( explode( '<', rtrim( $sender, '>' ) ) );