{"id":906,"date":"2019-10-18T02:04:06","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T02:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.projectimmerse.com\/blog\/?p=906"},"modified":"2020-06-15T09:56:41","modified_gmt":"2020-06-15T09:56:41","slug":"substr-vs-preg_match-using-php","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.projectimmerse.com\/blog\/substr-vs-preg_match-using-php\/","title":{"rendered":"substr() vs preg_match() using PHP"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Greetings fellow developers, I hope you’ve continued to immerse yourself in something interesting whether it’s programming, physics, math – or whatever. The point is – just keep pushing forward and don’t be afraid to fail. Seriously though, enjoy the journey of making mistakes.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

This post is about two functions – PHP’s substr()<\/a> and preg_match()<\/a> functions.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The reason why I want to emphasize on these two specific functions is because recently in my consulting work I run into some deep code that required my replacing a subtr() function with a preg_match() function. Now, mind you – finding this required some deep digging, hence the phrase “deep code”.<\/p>\r\n\r\nThe snippet of code I was working with looked like the code below:\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n$string = get_field('popup_slider',false,false);\r\n$arr = substr($string, -6,4);\r\n\r\n\r\n\/\/ Where $string would be pulling some kind of string like this example - [soliloquy id="9008"]\r\n\r\n\/\/ yeah I was working with a soliloquy plugin (hook)\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\r\n\r\n
The issue with this though as I learned is it’s reliability would break if we have an “id” longer than 4 digits or characters. Which was exactly what was happening in this case.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
And so the fix this with a more reliable method, I decided to use preg_match() and some regex to capture what I needed. Check out the code below:<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\npreg_match('\/id="([0-9]+)"\/', $string, $matches);\r\n\/\/print_r($matches);\r\n$arr = $matches[1];\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\r\n\r\n
So with using preg_match() we can capture any digits of any length and ensure that they aren’t cut off. We pass the $string function and the third argument would be the result once the first argument (regex) is applied.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
I would say that actually finding the issue itself was the more difficult task. And then finding a stable solution required some research. For me preg_match() seems quite stable – I’m curious to find out if there is another optimal solution.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Stay tuned for more nerdy posts – until then, keep immersing yourself.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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