Extract a value using reg expr

Hi,

I thought there's a more elegant method. I'm using:

                              $domain = explode(':', $domain);
                              $domain = $domain[0];

I guess it depends on complexity. The requested extraction is a simple enough one, but it has pitalls. For instance a colon is a valid URL chararcter because it separates port numbers. You could have

domain.com:8080: username

In that case a regex would be more flexible, but regexes to carry a performance overhead although in normal use you will never notice it.

And what if

http://domain.com: username

slipped through? The explode method would fail but altering the regex like so would always succeed


     $pattern = '!(http://)?([^:]+):.*!';
     preg_match( $pattern, $test, $arr );

     echo "the domain is " . $arr[2];


Horses for courses I guess.....  ;-)