PHP equivalent to Perl's $` and $' ?

[faithlezz]

Hi,

preg_match() allows you to pass an array that gets stuffed with the matches for each parenthesized subpattern. However, what I'd like to know is whether I can also get at the text before the matched text and the text after the matched text, like the Perl $` and $' operators. Is there some standard way to do this in PHP. I didn't see any way to do this after a couple of looks through the preg chapter in the PHP manual; I'm hoping I missed something.

[cupid]

I've been wondering this myself. Unfortunately, I really don't think PHP has these special variables. I agree that it'd be nice. This could be a possible workaround. We'll name this function ppMatch:

Say you're doing a search for anything in between percentage signs: /%.*%/

<?php

function ppMatch($matchString,$string,$pp) {
    $splitTok = split($matchString, $string);
    return $splitTok[$pp];
}

//example of usage
$searchString = "%.*%";
$string = "lalala %asdfasdf blah% asdfasdfasdf";

if (preg_match("/$searchString/", $string)) {
  echo ppMatch($searchString,$string,0); //same as echo $`
  echo ppMatch($searchString,$string,1); //same as echo $'

}

?>

[faithlezz]

Will this works for all cases, I mean just like the Perl $` and $' operators?

How can I do the same thing but this time with $& operator?

Thank you for all your help.

[cupid]

Originally posted by faithlezz
Will this works for all cases, I mean just like the Perl $` and $' operators?

It should, yes.

How can I do the same thing but this time with $& operator?

$&, being the match variable, is covered in PHP. Here's what you'd do:

//notice the third parameter, $match
if (preg_match("/$searchString/", $string, $match)) {
  echo $match[0]; //First string matched
  echo $match[1]; //Second string matched
  /* ...and so on... */
}