using php preg_match

Question

Hi-- I am trying to use PHP preg_math parse a string that looks like:

6.15608128 Norwegian kroner

I just want the first part (the digits), not the text. I wrote a simple regex like

[0-9\.]+ 

that works fine in regex testers, but PHP complains about the '+'. Can anyone help me write this regex so it's valid for the preg_match function? I've tried a ton of different ideas but I'm really not too knowledgeable with regex.

Thanks for any tips.

Answer 1

The regex works fine. Are you missing the delimiters? The function should be used like this:

preg_match('/[0-9\.]+/', $string, $result);

(BTW, you don't need to escape the . inside the character class. [0-9.] is enough.)

Answer 2

Without having the actual code, here is some code that does work:

$string = "6.15608128 Norwegian kroner";
preg_match('#[0-9\.]+#', $string, $matches); 

print_r($matches);

/* Outputs:

     Array
    (
        [0] => 6.15608128
    )
*/

The # signs are delimiters. For more information on the regex with php, see this article.

Answer 3

Are you enclosing your pattern in slashes?

preg_match('/[0-9\.]+/', $string, $matches);

Answer 4

Try this:

$s = '6.15608128 Norwegian kroner';

preg_match('/[0-9]*\.[0-9]*/', $s, $matches);
var_dump($matches);