Regex ending syntax

[Blixa]

Hello,

I am trying to make a comment line reader that reads the value between a sort of syntax.

However it has an space at the end and ofc I could use the trim functions but wondering if its possible within regular expressions.

<?PHP

$var = '--- lol lol ---';

$count = preg_match_all('~---(?:[[:space:]])?(.*)[^[:space:]]$(?:[[:space:]])?---~',$var,$reg);

var_dump($reg);

?>

array
  0 => 
    array
      0 => string '--- lol lol ---' (length=15)
  1 => 
    array
      0 => string 'lol lol ' (length=8)

I thought something like this:

~---(?:[[:space:]])?(.*)[^[:space:]]$(?:[[:space:]])?---~

(.*)[^[:space:]]$ <- doesn't work

But it doesn't work.
Any suggestions / something to add?

Thanks in advance

[kows]

.. I have no idea if you added those :space: words by yourself to illustrate that there was a space there or not, but if you did -- in the future, you should not. people who help you are going to copy and paste your code, not attempt to re-type it ;)

anyhow, I don't know what you were doing. I'm not sure if you're a super regular expression whiz or just some guy trying to get something to work. I created the following regular expression to suit your needs; I've written a quick explanation of how it works before you go ahead with using it.

$match = '/^---[\s]*(.*[^\s])[\s]*---$/'; 

so. what this will do is look at the beginning of the string (^) and looks for three dashes. then, it looks for zero or more whitespace characters (\s), and then matches any character zero or more times that is not a whitespace character. then, it looks for zero or more whitespace characters again, followed by three dashes. this is the end of the string ($). it will only actually match the string found within the dashes, excluding any whitespace encountered on the edges of the string.

hope that works out for you.

[Blixa]

that helped. But run into an other problem.

now for example if I take like 3 statements.

--- comment [ something ] [ reason] time [ timestamp ] ---

it will find something ] date [ reason instead of something.

I figured cause of its only on the end of the group( (.+[^\s\[]) not ending with with ] but also cant contain a ]

any suggestions?

regex for now:

$match = '~^\---[\s]*comment\[[\s]*(.+[^\s\]])[\s*\][\s]*\[[\s]*(.+[^\s\]])[\s]*\][\s]*(?:reason[\s]*\[(.+[^\s\]])[^\s]*\][\s]*)?\}$~';