asked on

Word delimiters? preg_match PHP

Hi there...

I am going to kill myself with a spoon in a minute...

I'd like to match string that begin with the word "ball":

I tried the following:
/\bball/im = no luck
/\bball\b/im = no luck
/ball/ = positive

I'd like this to match as follows
 
Ball is red. = match
Balls are red = match
RedBall is red = no match

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dvz-

try

/^ball.*/

potworny

ASKER

And what about ball in the following sentences? :)

This is a ball that is red. = match
I have a lot of balling to do. = match

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Terry Woods

/\bball/im
is correct - can you post your code, and maybe I can find a problem with it?

dvz-

hrm...

that's odd.

$regex = '/^[bB]all.*/';

is saying to match 'ball' as the first chars of the string, and any other non new-line character after (.*).

potworny

ASKER

The database contains:

/\bball/i

$query = "SELECT blackword_pattern FROM tbl_blackwords";
 
$countRows = $db->query($query);
while( $countRow = $db->fetch_array($countRows)){
      if( preg_match($countRow['blackword_pattern'], $string) ) return true; # found something
}
 
return false; #found nothing

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Terry Woods

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potworny

ASKER

I made a stupid mistake. Yes.
The database contains "/\bball/im"
There should be "/\\bball/im"
(double backslash)

Thank you very much for your help guys. You saved one life :)