searching database with regular expression condition using php

Question

I have database as following:

database name=words , table name=collection, column name=word
word
----
vivek
nidhi
neha
sidhu
hin

I need to search an array of strings with regular expression condition:

<?php
$array=array('vivek','nidhi','neha','akshay','nitin','nid','nih','hin');
@ $db=new mysqli('localhost','root','','words');
if(mysqli_connect_errno())
{
    echo 'Error:Could not connect to the database';
}
else
echo 'connected';
$db->select_db('words');
$count = 0;
foreach($array as $s)
{    
    if(preg_match('/^[nidhi]+$/', $s))
    {
    $query="select * from collection where word LIKE '%".$s."%'";
    $result=$db->query($query);
    if($result)
    $count += $result->num_rows;
    }   

}
echo $count;
$db->close();
?>

i am using '/^[nidhi]+$/' regular expression so I should get only 2 ans i.e. nidhi,hin but my problem is I am geting 3 ans i.e nidhi,nid,hin.

Sebastian Zartner · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-27 18:50:06Z

1

The way you are currently doing is matching the words, which are formed from any of the characters in nidhi.

If you need to match only nidhi and hin then you should pipe (|) the words in the exression:

if(preg_match('/^nidhi|hin$/', $s))

edited Feb 27, 2014 at 18:50

Sebastian Zartner

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answered Feb 27, 2014 at 14:34

Sabuj Hassan

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5 Comments

Vivek Over a year ago

no i need to match all the words that are formed by the alphabets n,i,d,h,i that combines and become '/^[nidhi]+$/' regular expression.

Sabuj Hassan Over a year ago

nid whats the problem with it? it also formed from [nidhi].

Vivek Over a year ago

but checkout the database entries. 'nid' is not in the database. this regular expression is being used to filter strings that are formed with 'n','i','d','h'

Sabuj Hassan Over a year ago

Your sql query has '%".$s."%'. So when you use nid here it becomes %nid%. That why your nid and nidhi both matches with nidhi in your database.

Sabuj Hassan Over a year ago

Try REGEXP '^".$s."$' instead of LIKE '%".$s."%'

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