preg_match_all

• PHP returns an integer with the number of matches for preg_match_all and populates a matches array by reference. Ruby performs multiple matches for a string using the String#scan method. This method returns a nested array of matches or an empty array when no matches are found. Be aware that the nesting of values in this array is different than how preg_match_all orders matches.

  In this example, we match components of the email address, and both preg_match_all and String#scan give us an array of matches that are found.

  PHP

  $string = 'joe@example.com; walter@example.org';
  $result = preg_match_all('/([a-z0-9_.-]+)@([a-z0-9-]+)\.[a-z.]+/i', 
            $string, $matches);
  var_export($result);
  // => 2
   
  var_export($matches);
  // => array(array('joe@example.com', 'walter@example.org'),
  //          array('joe',             'walter'),
  //          array('example',         'example'),

  Ruby

  string = 'joe@example.com; walter@example.org'
  result = string.scan(/([a-z0-9_.-]+)@([a-z0-9-]+)\.[a-z.]+/i)
  p result.size
  # => 2
   
  p result
  # => [["joe", "example"], ["walter", "example"]]

  see also

  • preg_match
  • preg_replace
  • preg_split

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