Well, I found my answer and thought I'd share here. It was explained to me that... [ The regex engine is trying to satisfy the conditions I applied as greedily as possible. `\w` matches digits or letters, and I gave it a greedy quantifier: + This means grab as much as you can and give back if necessary. So it grabbed `vehicle10` but then next token wanted at least one digit, so it backtracked and matched `vehicle1` ] (credit : firasdib) Thank you all for your contributions. Best, Karl DeSaulniers Design Drumm http://designdrumm.com On Oct 23, 2015, at 8:06 PM, Karl DeSaulniers <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > This is where I tested at. > > http://www.phpliveregex.com > > Could it be their parser doing this or is this correct protocol? > Just seems odd to me. > > Best, > > Karl DeSaulniers > Design Drumm > http://designdrumm.com > > > > On Oct 23, 2015, at 8:04 PM, Karl DeSaulniers <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> Correct. >> >> So with my case in needing to grab just words, >> >> [\D] will grab all words, dashes, hyphens etc. >> Same with [\S]. >> >> In essence grabbing all words if there is nothing else to grab except a number. >> However, the shorthand \w does not and would seem (to me) that it should by definition only capture words and not the number 1. >> Franks explanation makes some sense to me, but how come it didn't grab the number 0 then? >> If you notice, the 10 got split up. >> >> Best, >> >> Karl DeSaulniers >> Design Drumm >> http://designdrumm.com >> >> >> >> On Oct 23, 2015, at 7:54 PM, German Geek <geek.de@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >>> In regular expressions a backslash capital letter means the opposite. So, \D is NON-digits, \W is NON-word characters and \S is NON-whitespace. You can also do [A-z]* to get all letters in the English language plus the characters between them like ^ and literal \. >>> >>> I believe you can also do Unicode ranges with the respective \usomehex, but I haven't tried that yet. >>> >>> Tim >>> >>> On Sat, 24 Oct 2015 at 12:38 Karl DeSaulniers <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> On Oct 23, 2015, at 7:54 AM, Frank Arensmeier <farensmeier@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> >>> > >>> >> 23 okt 2015 kl. 14:44 skrev Karl DeSaulniers <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: >>> >> >>> >> Hello all, >>> >> With the given string.. >>> >> >>> >> vehicle10-vehicle-name >>> >> >>> >> Running regex in a preg_match like >>> >> >>> >> "/(\w+)([0-9+]+)-(.*)/" >>> >> >>> >> I am getting. >>> >> >>> >> array( >>> >> 0 => vehicle10-vehicle-name >>> >> 1 => vehicle1 >>> >> 2 => 0 >>> >> 3 => vehicle-name >>> >> ) >>> >> >>> >> If I change it to. >>> >> >>> >> "/(\D+)([0-9+]+)-(.*)/" >>> >> >>> >> it works as expected. >>> >> >>> >> array( >>> >> 0 => vehicle10-vehicle-name >>> >> 1 => vehicle >>> >> 2 => 10 >>> >> 3 => vehicle-name >>> >> ) >>> >> >>> >> Why is the \w directive including a digit? >>> >> Since when is the number 1 a word?? >>> >> >>> >> If anyone could enlighten me, I would greatly appreciate it. >>> >> >>> >> TIA >>> >> >>> >> Best, >>> >> >>> >> Karl DeSaulniers >>> >> Design Drumm >>> >> http://designdrumm.com >>> >> >>> > >>> > Hi Karl! >>> > >>> > I am not able to pinpoint the exact definition in the official PCRE documentation right now (http://www.pcre.org). But the short hand \w does in deed include numbers. As you can read here for example (https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/regex/pre_char_classes.html), >>> > >>> > \w A word character: [a-zA-Z_0-9] >>> > >>> > Although its already Friday, your pattern is working as expected. >>> > >>> > /frank >>> > >>> >>> OH, ok, so the \w basically is the shorthand of [a-zA-Z_0-9]? >>> That would make sense, however I think it is misleading as there are \D and \S which denote grabbing word and or digits respectfully. >>> I thought that \w meant one 'word' character (not digit or special characters or space or new line, just a word), >>> or at least that is what I have read in my searches, hence the question here. >>> >>> Thank for your response! >>> >>> Best, >>> >>> Karl DeSaulniers >>> Design Drumm >>> http://designdrumm.com >>> -- >>> PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) >>> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php >>> >> >
