PHP Regular Expression syntax

Answer 1

As I see it, you can just use the existing spaces as delimiters, yielding the following expression:

/([^ ]+) ([^ ]+) (.+)/

That is: three groups separated by spaces, of which the first two groups don’t contain any spaces (but the third may).

Answer 2

You can use this instead of a regex:

$parts = explode(" ", $string, 3);

Answer 3

if(preg_match('([0-9/]+ [0-9:]+)', $myString, $regs)) {
  $myTime = strtotime($regs[1]);
}

Answer 4

I think I'll have a go a this

preg_match('|^([0-9]{2})/([0-9]{2})/([0-9]{4})\s([0-9]{2}):([0-9]{2}):([0-9]{2})\s(.*)$|',$str,$matches);
list($str,$d,$m,$y,$h,$m,$s,$comment)=$matches;

you then have the necessary values to reconstruct the time in any format you wish.

Answer 5

If you just want to extract it to 2 strings, you can use:

([0-9]{1,2}\/[0-9]{1,2}\/[0-9]{4}\s[0-9]{1,2}:[0-9]{1,2}:[0-9]{1,2})\s(.*)

Answer 6

Well, if your date/time is stored as type datetime, then you can use something like

preg_match("/^([0-9\\/]{10} [0-9:]{8}) (.*)$/",$str,$matches);
$datetime = $matches[1];
$description = $matches[2];

If your storing the date/time separately, you can use

preg_match("/^([0-9\\/]{10}) ([0-9:]{8}) (.*)$/",$str,$matches);
$date = $matches[1];
$time = $matches[2];
$description = $matches[3];

Of course, an alternative to regular expressions is to explode the string:

list($date,$time,$description) = explode(' ',$str,3);

And another option, assuming the dates and times are always the same length:

$date = substr($str,0,10);
$time = substr($str,11,19);
$description = substr($str,20);

Answer 7

In the circumstances regex is expensive. If this is the format always guaranteed to be there, you could split it by 2 spaces and use the first 2 slices as following:

$str = "10/06/2010 09:10:40 Work not yet started";
$slices = explode(" ", $str, 3);
$timestamp = strtotime($slices[0] . $slices[1]);
echo "String is $str\n";
echo "Timestamp is $timestamp\n";
echo "Timestamp to date is " . strftime("%d.%m.%Y %T", $timestamp) . "\n";

Answer 8

You can extract the information with the below code:

// sample string you provided
$string = "10/06/2010 09:10:40 Work not yet started";

// regular expression to use
$regex = "/^(\d+)\/(\d+)\/(\d+) (\d+)\:(\d+)\:(\d+) (.+?)$/";

Now, all the fields you'd want is in the array $matches. To extract informations into the array $matches, you can use preg_match()

// method 1: just extract
preg_match($regex, $string, $matches);

// method 2: to check if the string matches the format you provided first
//           then do something with the extracted text
if (preg_match($regex, $string, $matches) > 0) {
   // do something
}

To further use the information you've got:

// to get a Unix timestamp out of the matches
// you may use mktime()

// method 1: supposed your date format above is dd/mm/yyyy
$timestamp = mktime($matches[4], $matches[5], $matches[6], 
  $matches[2], $matches[1], $matches[3]);

// method 2: or if your date format above is mm/dd/yyyy
$timestamp = mktime($matches[4], $matches[5], $matches[6], 
  $matches[1], $matches[2], $matches[3]);

Then you may want to see if the time is correctly parsed:

print date('r', $timestamp)

At last, get the comment like this:

$comment = $matches[7];

Be aware of time zone issue. If you're parsing these data on the same server they're generated, you'd most likely be fine. You might need to add / subtract time from the timestamp above.

Answer 9

$s = '10/06/2010 09:10:40 Work not yet started';
$date = substr($s, 0, 19);
$msg = substr($s, 20);

$date = strtotime($date);
// or
$date = strptime($date, "%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S");