Advanced string searching in PHP

Question

Assuming I have an array of colors:

$colors = array('black','yellow','red');
$color = 'reddish';

How can I calculate the number of occurrence of them? Because substr_count() may be well detecting 'red', but 'reddish' won't be included. So I need to match the string precisely despite what's before or after it.

$string = implode(' ', $colors);
echo substr_count($string, $color);

Do you want reddish to be a match or not? I don't understand. — simeg
– simeg, Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 19:15
Yes, indeed. I want it to be counted. As well as any word/string that has the 'red' substring within. i.e. 9@)redV_%1bm. Anything — Julian Sanders
– Julian Sanders, Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 19:17
Yes but can you run the above code and see if you get 'reddish' counted? — Julian Sanders
– Julian Sanders, Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 19:18
I don't need to run it. I know what it does. I don't understand why you expect it to work what you have. You are searching for black yellow red in the string reddish hence it is not a match — PeeHaa
– PeeHaa, Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 19:21

Ryan Kempt · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-20 19:23:02Z

1

How about something like this?

$colors = array('black', 'yellow', 'red');
$color = 'reddish';

$string = implode('|', $colors);

preg_match_all("/".$string."/i", $color, $matches);

print_r($matches); // will print an array of the matches
echo count($matches[0]); // will echo how many matches were made

This will output 1, and if $color were to equal "reddish yellowy" the output would be 2 since it matches both "red" and "yellow" from the $colors array.

answered Jul 20, 2014 at 19:23

Ryan Kempt

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1 Comment

Julian Sanders Over a year ago

Solves the issue. Thank you for your time :)

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