Old link to Oniguruma regex syntax is not working anymore, there is a working one:
https://github.com/geoffgarside/oniguruma/blob/master/Syntax.txt
mb_ereg
(PHP 4 >= 4.2.0, PHP 5, PHP 7)
mb_ereg — Regular expression match with multibyte support
Description
mb_ereg
( string
$pattern
, string $string
[, array &$regs
] ) : intExecutes the regular expression match with multibyte support.
Parameters
-
pattern -
The search pattern.
-
string -
The search string.
-
regs -
If matches are found for parenthesized substrings of
patternand the function is called with the third argumentregs, the matches will be stored in the elements of the arrayregs. If no matches are found,regsis set to an empty array.$regs[1] will contain the substring which starts at the first left parenthesis; $regs[2] will contain the substring starting at the second, and so on. $regs[0] will contain a copy of the complete string matched.
Return Values
Returns the byte length of the matched string if a match for
pattern was found in string,
or FALSE if no matches were found or an error occurred.
If the optional parameter regs was not passed or
the length of the matched string is 0, this function returns 1.
Changelog
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 7.1.0 |
mb_ereg() will now set regs to
an empty array, if nothing matched. Formerly,
regs was not modified in that case.
|
Notes
Note:
The internal encoding or the character encoding specified by mb_regex_encoding() will be used as the character encoding for this function.
See Also
- mb_regex_encoding() - Set/Get character encoding for multibyte regex
- mb_eregi() - Regular expression match ignoring case with multibyte support
add a note
User Contributed Notes 7 notes
Anonymous ¶
2 years ago
pressler at hotmail dot de ¶
6 years ago
Note that mb_ereg() does not support the \uFFFF unicode syntax but uses \x{FFFF} instead:
<?PHP
$text = 'Peter is a boy.'; // english
$text = 'بيتر هو صبي.'; // arabic
//$text = 'פיטר ×”×•× ×™×œ×“.'; // hebrew
mb_regex_encoding('UTF-8');
if(mb_ereg('[\x{0600}-\x{06FF}]', $text)) // arabic range
//if(mb_ereg('[\x{0590}-\x{05FF}]', $text)) // hebrew range
{
echo "Text has some arabic/hebrew characters.";
}
else
{
echo "Text doesnt have arabic/hebrew characters.";
}
?>
lastuser at example dot com ¶
1 year ago
I hope this information is shown somewhere on php.net.
According to "https://github.com/php/php-src/tree/PHP-5.6/ext/mbstring/oniguruma",
the bundled Oniguruma regex library version seems ...
4.7.1 between PHP 5.3 - 5.4.45,
5.9.2 between PHP 5.5 - 7.1.16,
6.3.0 since PHP 7.2 - .
Anonymous ¶
6 months ago
<?php
// in PHP_VERSION 7.1
// WITHOUT $regs (3rd argument)
$int = mb_ereg('abcde', '_abcde_'); // [5 bytes match]
var_dump($int); // int(1)
$int = mb_ereg('ab', '_ab_'); // [2 bytes match]
var_dump($int); // int(1)
$int = mb_ereg('^', '_ab_'); // [0 bytes match]
var_dump($int); // int(1)
$int = mb_ereg('ab', '__'); // [not match]
var_dump($int); // bool(false)
$int = mb_ereg('', '_ab_'); // [error : empty pattern]
// Warning: mb_ereg(): empty pattern in ...
var_dump($int); // bool(false)
$int = mb_ereg('ab'); // [error : fewer arguments]
// Warning: mb_ereg() expects at least 2 parameters, 1 given in ...
var_dump($int); // bool(false)
// Without 3rd argument, mb_ereg() returns either int(1) or bool(false).
// WITH $regs (3rd argument)
$int = mb_ereg('abcde', '_abcde_', $regs);// [5 bytes match]
var_dump($int); // int(5)
var_dump($regs); // array(1) { [0]=> string(5) "abcde" }
$int = mb_ereg('ab', '_ab_', $regs); // [2 bytes match]
var_dump($int); // int(2)
var_dump($regs); // array(1) { [0]=> string(2) "ab" }
$int = mb_ereg('^', '_ab_', $regs); // [0 bytes match]
var_dump($int); // int(1)
var_dump($regs); // array(1) { [0]=> bool(false) }
$int = mb_ereg('ab', '__', $regs); // [not match]
var_dump($int); // bool(false)
var_dump($regs); // array(0) { }
$int = mb_ereg('', '_ab_', $regs); // [error : empty pattern]
// Warning: mb_ereg(): empty pattern in ...
var_dump($int); // bool(false)
var_dump($regs); // array(0) { }
$int = mb_ereg('ab'); // [error : fewer arguments]
// Warning: mb_ereg() expects at least 2 parameters, 1 given in ...
var_dump($int); // bool(false)
var_dump($regs); // array(0) { }
// With 3rd argument, mb_ereg() returns either int(how many bytes matched) or bool(false)
// and 3rd argument is a bit complicated.
?>
mb_ereg() seems unable to Use "named sub ¶
4 years ago
mb_ereg() seems unable to Use "named subpattern".
preg_match() seems a substitute only in UTF-8 encoding.
<?php
$text = 'multi_byte_string';
$pattern = '.*(?<name>string).*'; // "?P" causes "mbregex compile err" in PHP 5.3.5
if(mb_ereg($pattern, $text, $matches)){
echo '<pre>'.print_r($matches, true).'</pre>';
}else{
echo 'no match';
}
?>
This code ignores "?<name>" in $pattern and displays below.
Array
(
[0] => multi_byte_string
[1] => string
)
$pattern = '/.*(?<name>string).*/u';
if(preg_match($pattern, $text, $matches)){
instead of lines 2 & 3
displays below (in UTF-8 encoding).
Array
(
[0] => multi_byte_string
[name] => string
[1] => string
)
Riikka K ¶
5 years ago
While hardly mentioned anywhere, it may be useful to note that mb_ereg uses Oniguruma library internally. The syntax for the default mode (ruby) is described here:
http://www.geocities.jp/kosako3/oniguruma/doc/RE.txt
Jon ¶
10 years ago
Hebrew regex tested on PHP 5, Ubuntu 8.04.
Seems to work fine without the mb_regex_encoding lines (commented out).
Didn't seem to work with \uxxxx (also commented out).
<?php
echo "Line ";
//mb_regex_encoding("ISO-8859-8");
//if(mb_ereg(".*([\u05d0-\u05ea]).*", $this->current_line))
if(mb_ereg(".*([×-ת]).*", $this->current_line))
{
echo "has";
}
else
{
echo "doesn't have";
}
echo " Hebrew characters.<br>";
//mb_regex_encoding("UTF-8");
?>
