Solved: Check if string contain multiple dashes (-) characters in php

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Pedro Chagas🇵🇹

Check if string contain multiple dashes (-) characters in php

Hi E's,

I need a solution, to know if there are multiple dashes in a string.

I try to do like this, but no work:

$str = "--test---teste---";
if(preg_match('#(-\s*)+#i', $str)){
    echo "contain";
}
//atention, "-test-test-" is correct!

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What I did wrong?

The best regards,

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Scott Bennett🇺🇸

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gr8gonzo🇺🇸

I know you've already selected the answer but a regular expression is probably overkill here.

If you are just looking to see if there are two dashes in a row, then use strpos():

if(strpos($str,"--") !== false)
{
    echo "there are 2 dashes in a row in the string.";
}

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If you just want to check for at least one dash, use the same code but use "-" instead of "--".

If you want to count how many dashes there are in the string, use substr_count():

echo "There are " . substr_count($str,"-") . " dashes in the string.";

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The only reason to use a regular expression is if you need to check for spaces between the dashes.

Scott Bennett🇺🇸

yeah, that is true... since it is 2 or more, just looking for 2 would be sufficient. I just saw the flaw in your regular expression and fixed that, but it really isn't even needed if that is all you are looking for.

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PHP

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PHP is a widely-used server-side scripting language especially suited for web development, powering tens of millions of sites from Facebook to personal WordPress blogs. PHP is often paired with the MySQL relational database, but includes support for most other mainstream databases. By utilizing different Server APIs, PHP can work on many different web servers as a server-side scripting language.