Match a specific line in string using regex

Question

I have a string that contains some substrings seperated by a new line.

Forexample :

$x="This is the first line.
      This is the second line.
      This is the third line.";

I want to get the third line from this string,

My regex so far :

/\s*([^\n]+)/i

But this returns the whole string,

I have also tried

/\n{3}\s*([^\n]+)/i

It matched nothing.

Is there any way in regex to solve my problem? I have been trying to solve it myself for the last 30mnts, but all of my attempts failed.

 preg_match_all("/\s*([^\n]+)/i",$x,$m);
print_r($m);

Thank you!

Why not explode with \n and get the last item? A regex is necessary when you have complex patterns. Here, you need to get some specific line. — Wiktor Stribiżew
– Wiktor Stribiżew, Commented Dec 12, 2015 at 13:18
Could you provide a full example of the string you are trying to parse since you said this is only a small part of a bigger string you are trying to parse... — Clay
– Clay, Commented Dec 12, 2015 at 13:22

TwoStraws · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-12 13:19:23Z

5

Unless I'm misunderstanding the complexity of your situation, you should be able to just use explode() like this:

$split = explode("\n", $x);
print_r($split[2]);

answered Dec 12, 2015 at 13:19

TwoStraws

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1 Comment

Also trim the output, since it appears that $x contains leading spaces.

Avinash Raj · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-12 13:20:53Z

1

Just use s modifier along with $ . In dotall mode $ matches the end of very last line.

preg_match('~\s*([^\n]+)$~s',$x,$m);

answered Dec 12, 2015 at 13:16

Avinash Raj

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You do not need /s. I doubt you need a regex at all here.