Section 5.2 String Processing with Regular Expressions in PHP

Learning Objectives

After you have completed this section, you should be able to

• write regular expressions.
• use regular expressions to process strings.

Activities

• Carefully read the learning objectives.
• Find and study some PHP scripts on the web that use regular expressions.
• Watch the related sections of the presentation for Chapter 19;
• Read section 19.7 of Chapter 19 PHP.
• See the manual found at http://php.net/manual/en/book.regex.php
• See also https://www.php.net/manual/en/book.pcre.php
• Find answers to the study questions below.
• Do exercises 19.4 and 19.8 in Chapter 19.

Study Questions

1. What are regular expressions in PHP?
2. What can regular expressions be used for in PHP?
3. How do you write and use regular expressions in PHP?
4. What are quantifiers?
5. How do you search for expressions?
6. How do you represent patterns in PHP?
7. How do you find matches to a given pattern with PHP?
8. What can you do with multiple instances of a pattern in PHP?
9. How do you assign values to variables in PHP?
10. What are character classes? What can they be used for?

Summary

Read the Chapter 19 summary.