Help needed to "find" a certain string in file using regex...

[hstraf]

Hello,

I have a file with contents like this:

text here
asdfasdf
asdf
f
asdfsdf
<!-- #startpart -->
stuff goes here
<!-- #endpart -->
adsf
adsf
ffd
ff
df

I am trying to write some php code that will allow me to check and see if the file contains the a valid pair of "startpart" and "endpart" comments. (There can be an unknown number of spaces between each part of the HTML comments. The "#startpart" comment might also have some other junk in it like this: "<!-- #startpart anything else here -->". However, only the "<!-- #startpart -->" portion is actually required and should be checked if it exists.)

Does anyone know how to do this?

Here's what I have so far:

$lines = file($file);
$count = 0;
for($x=0; $x<count($lines); $x++){ // For each line in the file..
/* The \b in the pattern indicates a word boundary, so only the distinct
     word is matched, and not a word partial.
     The "i" after the pattern delimiter indicates a case-insensitive search
    */
if (preg_match("/\b<!--\b(.*)\b#Startpart\b(.*)\b-->\b/i", $lines[$x])) { 
    $count += 1;
     }
if (preg_match("/\b<!--\b(.*)\b#EndPart\b(.*)\b-->\b/i", $lines[$x])) { 
     $count += 1;
     }
}
if(!($count%2) && $count>0) { 
return true; // At least one *pair* of valid start/end tags was found.
} 
else { 
return false; // No valid tags were found, or tags were not in pairs.
} 

However, this doesn't work. I'm not an expert with regex, so I'm hoping someone can help?

[jaswinder_rana]

try this

 $lines = file($file);
$count = 0;
for($x=0; $x<count($lines); $x++){ // For each line in the file..
/* The \b in the pattern indicates a word boundary, so only the distinct
     word is matched, and not a word partial.
     The "i" after the pattern delimiter indicates a case-insensitive search
    */
if (preg_match("/<!-- *#startpart *-->/i", $lines[$x])) {
    $count += 1;
     }
if (preg_match("/<!-- *#endpart *-->/i", $lines[$x])) {
     $count += 1;
     }
}
if(!($count%2) && $count>0) {
return true; // At least one *pair* of valid start/end tags was found.
}
else {
return false; // No valid tags were found, or tags were not in pairs.
} 

[hstraf]

try this

Yes, that worked. Thanks!

[weirdscionce]

Beating a dead horse, really bad here, but Id rather not start a new thread on it.

How can you return 'stuff goes here' portion?

[jaswinder_rana]

try

<!-- #startpart -->
stuff goes here
<!-- #endpart -->

Taking the above html cod ein consideration, try this

$line = '<!-- #startpart -->'.
      'stuff goes here'.
      '<!-- #endpart -->';//ASSUMING you would open the file and get the text from there or read the html page.

if (preg_match("~<!--\s*#startpart\s*-->(.*?)<!--\s*#endpart\s*-->~i", $line,$matchArr))
{
   print_r($matchArr);
} 

Logic is correct, might be syntax problem somewhere, not tested.