PHP Regular Expressions Reference
Regular Expressions Reference
The following table lists the popular regular expressions.
Expression | Will match . . . |
---|---|
foo | The string "foo" |
^foo | "foo" at the start of a line |
foo$ | "foo" at the end of a line |
^foo$ | "foo" when it is alone on a line |
[Ff]oo | "Foo" or "foo" |
[abc] | a, b, or c |
[^abc] | d, e, f, g, V, %, ~, 5, etc.-everything that is not a, b, or c (^ is "not" inside character classes) |
[A-Z] | Any uppercase letter |
[a-z] | Any lowercase letter |
[A-Za-z] | Any letter |
[A-Za-z0-9] | Any letter or number |
[A-Z]+ | One or more uppercase letters |
[A-Z]* | Zero or more uppercase letters |
[A-Z]? | Zero or one uppercase letters |
[A-Z]{3} | Three uppercase letters |
[A-Z]{3,} | A minimum of three uppercase letters |
[A-Z]{1,3} | One, two, or three uppercase letters |
[^0-9] | Any non-numeric character |
[^0-9A-Za-z] | Any symbol (not a number or a letter) |
(cat|sat) | Matches either "cat" or "sat" |
([A-Z]{3}|[0-9]{4}) | Matches three letters or four numbers |
PHP* | PH, PHPP, PHPPPP, etc. |
PHP+ | PHP, PHPP, PHPPPP, etc. |
PHP? | PHP, PH |
. | Any character except \n (new line) |
\b | A word boundary; e.g. te\b matches the "te" in "late" but not the "te" in "tell." |
\B | A non-word boundary; "te\B" matches the "te" in "tell" but not the "te" in "late." |
\n | Newline character |
\s | Any whitespace (new line, space, tab, etc.) |
\S | Any non-whitespace character |