escape slash in php regex

Question

I try to execute a preg_match with PHP but I can not escape the slash properly. The preg_match should return subsrting between Prozessor and first slash

$str="Prozessor: AMD A-Serie A8-4500M / 19 GHz ( 28 GHz ) /";

preg_match('/Prozessor: (.*) \//', $str, $matches)

Prozessor: AMD A-Serie A8-4500M / 19 GHz ( 28 GHz ) /

I would like to get the name of the Processor which should give me back

AMD A-Serie A8-4500M

What I'm doing wrong

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 13 '14 at 19:59

Use /Prozessor: (.*?) \//. This will replace a greedy selector with a lazy selector. Example:

$str="Prozessor: AMD A-Serie A8-4500M / 19 GHz ( 28 GHz ) /";
preg_match('/Prozessor: (.*?) \//', $str, $matches);

var_dump($matches[1]);
// string(33) "Prozessor: AMD A-Serie A8-4500M"

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 13 '14 at 20:00

Use a non-greedy quantifier:

preg_match('/Prozessor: (.*?) \//', $str, $matches)

Or a character class:

preg_match('/Prozessor: ([^\/]*) \//', $str, $matches)

Also note, if you change your regex delimiter, you won't have to worry about escaping it:

preg_match('#Prozessor: ([^/]*) /#', $str, $matches)

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 13 '14 at 20:03

This works:

$str="Prozessor: AMD A-Serie A8-4500M / 19 GHz ( 28 GHz ) /";
preg_match('/^Prozessor: (?P<prozessor>[a-z0-9\s-]+) \//i', $str, $matches);
var_dump($matches['prozessor']);

outputs

string(20) "AMD A-Serie A8-4500M"

Or alternatively, you could add an ungreedy modifier to the end of your regex:

preg_match('/Prozessor: (.*) \//U', $str, $matches)

More information here: http://php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.modifiers.php

escape slash in php regex

3 Answers3