Hello I am trying to extract some data from a string using PHP. I am used to doing this in Perl.

This is a sample of the data format.
^UU1877778^Uk665544^UC^PC2^UfYTR^YUY^^Z

The data represents user data and is variable length from record to record.

I would like some code that will extract the data between delimiters. For example, between ^Uk and ^UC the data returned would be 665544.

In perl you would have a pattern match something like.
$data ~= /*.\^Uk(.*?)\^UC.*/;
$extract = $1;
$extract would equal 665544.

The data in brackets will get assigned to $1.

Is there a way of doing this in PHP? I have done something close using $num = preg_match_all('/\^UU.+\^Uk/', $searchdata, $match, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);

This kind of works but it includes the ^UU and ^Uk as part of the match which I then have to strip off later. Sometimes my delimiter maybe ^^Z. I have read two PHP books and so far have not found a Perl like or other easy way of doing this.


Walter G.

The only thing you need to modify in your preg_match pattern is to add a parenthesized subexpression. preg_match() will return the entire string if the expression matches; essentially providing a non-false value signifying a successful match. Each parenthesized subexpression, if any, that matches is also returned.

Play with print_r() and/or var_dump() when dealing with the return values of preg_match functions to get a feel for the structure of the return value as it relates to a parenthesized pattern.

$pattern = '/^UU(.*)^Uk/';
$num = preg_match_all($pattern, $searchdata, $matches);

echo "<pre>Matches are:";
print_r($matches);
echo "</pre>\n";


Take care,

Nik
http://www.bigaction.org/

if i understand your problem correctly, you want to go from :
^a^b^c^d^
to
array ( 'a','b','c','d' )

if so, you can user the explode function using '^' as a separator :

$myData = "^a^b^c^d^";
$myNewData = explode( "^", $myData );

//to display
echo "<pre>";
print_r( array_values($myNewData) );
echo "</pre>";

php/java developer
NTIC engineer