Capture recurring regex patterns in PHP

Question

I have a pattern

ab 23 cde 25 ... and so on

Can I capture the above pattern like

array(
 [patterns] => array(
   [0] => array(
    [payer] => 'ab'
    [amt] => 23
   )
   [1] => array(
    [payer] => 'cde'
    [amt] => 25
   )
 )
)

Is this possible?

Answer 1

Form a regex to match each item in your array (\w+\s+\d+). Collect all of them (this should give you chunks like ab 23).

Then for each of these items, split on whitespace and cram into your larger array as [payer], [amt].

Answer 2

You can use preg_match_all for this as:

$str = 'ab 23 cde 25';
preg_match_all('/(\w+)\s+(\d+)/',$str,$matches);
$result = array();
for($i=0;$i<count($matches[0]);$i++) {
        $result[] = array('payer' => $matches[1][$i], 'amt' => $matches[2][$i]);
}

Working link

Answer 3

(?:'|.)(\w+)(?:'|$)