php regular expression extract part of text

Question

I need to extract from a DB,in which records in one column are combined in this way: first letter(Firstname1). Lastname1,first letter(Firstname2). Lastname2,....

here is an example of how I tried to resolve...

     $text2= "T. Toth, M. A. Carlo de Miller, T. Stallone";
     $keywords = preg_split("/,/", "$text2");

     print_r($keywords);

    //I got a result in this way:

    //Array ( [0] => T. Toth [1] => M. A. Carlo de Miller [2] => T. Stallone ) 

    // I want a result of the form :

    //Array ( [0] => T [1] => Toth [2] => M. A. [3] => Carlo de Miller [4] => T  and    so on....

Someone can get an idea of how to proceed?even if it can be in MYSQL

this is not exactly easily done. how are you going differentiate the T. and M. from T.Toth and M.A.Carlo? Both are initials, but obviously you want them treated differently — Marc B
– Marc B, Commented Mar 8, 2013 at 20:58

ole · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-08 21:39:18Z

1

One more variant:

$text2= "T. Toth, M. A. Carlo de Miller, T. Stallone";
$result = array();
foreach (explode(",",$text2) as $row)
{
  $row = explode(".",$row);
  $last = array_pop($row);
  $result[] = join(".",$row).".";
  $result[] = $last;
}
print_r($result);

Result:

Array ( [0] => T. [1] => Toth [2] => M. A. [3] => Carlo de Miller [4] => T. [5] => Stallone )

answered Mar 8, 2013 at 21:39

ole

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DaveRandom · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-08 21:35:15Z

I think this regular expression should more or less do what you want:

/
  (?:^|,)           # Start of subject or comma
  \s*               # Optional white space
  ((?:[a-z]\.\s*)+) # At least one occurrence of alpha followed by dot
  \s*               # Consume trailing whitespace
/ix

When used in combination with the PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY and PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE capture flags, this expression will obtain the result you want, the only caveat is that it will also capture some leading/trailing whitespace. I can't see a way to avoid this, and it can be easily trimmed off when you use the result.

$str = 'T. Toth, M. A. Carlo de Miller, T. Stallone';
$expr = '/(?:^|,)\s*((?:[a-z]\.\s*)+)\s*/i';
$flags = PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY | PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE;

$keywords = preg_split($expr, $str, -1, $flags);

print_r($keywords);

See it working

Luke · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-08 21:46:08Z

0

preg_split may not be the right function for this. Try this with preg_match_all:

$text2= "T. Toth, M. A. Carlo de Miller, T. Stallone";
preg_match_all("/\w{2,}(?:\s\w{2,})*|\w\.(?:\s\w\.)*/i", $text2, $matches);
print_r($matches[0]);

This picks out names and initials, while leaving out leading/trailing white-spaces.

First match whole name: \w{2,}(?:\s\w{2,})*

Second match initials: \w\.(?:\s\w\.)*

Results in:

Array ( [0] => Array ( [0] => T. [1] => Toth [2] => M. A. [3] => Carlo de Miller [4] => T. [5] => Stallone ) )

edited Mar 8, 2013 at 21:46

answered Mar 8, 2013 at 21:35

Luke

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