getting pregmatch to ignore spaces

I need pregmatch to ring true if my reg expression is: aloe vera

and the string contains any combination of aloe vera: aloe vera, aloevera, aloe vera gel , aloe veragel

i thought i could do this with the regex modifiers /ix but x is not working for me

 

try these tools

http://www.fileformat.info/tool/regex.htm

http://www.gskinner.com/RegExr/

Regards

Alex

 

try using the g modifier

 

yeah i tried that

here are my results so far

here is my string

aloe vera aloe vera aloevera aloe vera juice

if i use

/aloe vera/gism

match: aloe vera aloe vera aloevera aloe vera juice

if I use /aloe vera/gixsm

aloe vera aloe vera aloevera aloe vera juice

i want one general expression that will capture all the aloe vera's with our without whitespace

i mean think in the extreme, if somehow someone wrote alo e ver a i want to match it

 

aloe[^\w]+vera

 

May I ask why you're wanting this, is it to eliminate spam?

 

this doesn't work. it will only match aloe vera not aloevera

 

Why has this gone unnecessarily complex?

$word = 'some aloeveragel and some aloe vera gel and some aloevera';
preg_match_all('/aloe ?vera ?(gel)?/', $word, $matches);

print_r($matches);

PHP:

Does the job fine... returns:

Array
        (
            [0] => aloeveragel
            [1] => aloe vera gel
            [2] => aloevera
        )

Code (markup):

 

what do the ? marks mean

 

Optional...

 

so basically you are just searching for aloe somewhere in the string?


how is would this reply if you wanted to do: credit card AND creditcard but not credit by itself

 

<?php

$word = 'This will find credit card and creditcard but not credit - how awesome!';
preg_match_all('/credit ?card/', $word, $matches);

print_r($matches);

?>

PHP:

Returns:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => credit card
            [1] => creditcard
        )

)

Code (markup):

 

ok see that is what i don't get

? means optional

so that reads to me

credit and optional card

so how does it know not to match just credit

 

No... 'credit' optional space, and 'card'.

The ? operator only refers to the item directly before it... In this case - the space.

 

It's nice to be ignored... *sigh*

 

sorry

i have a site that if you are an affiliate referral of mine, i convert those words to your affiliate id

however there are plenty of tutorial on the net for converting links, i just coun't get the words to match like iw anted

 

Thank you

I am curious, will preg match all work on an array or just a string

 

String only, please read the documentation at: http://php.net/preg_match_all

 

nice thread - cheers