<HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >preg_match</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.44"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="PHP Manual" HREF="manual.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="Perl-compatible Regular Expression functions" HREF="ref.pcre.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="Perl-compatible Regular Expression functions" HREF="ref.pcre.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="preg_match_all" HREF="function.preg-match-all.html"></HEAD ><BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >PHP Manual</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="ref.pcre.html" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="function.preg-match-all.html" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><H1 ><A NAME="function.preg-match" >preg_match</A ></H1 ><DIV CLASS="refnamediv" ><A NAME="AEN22657" ></A >preg_match -- Perform a regular expression match</DIV ><DIV CLASS="refsect1" ><A NAME="AEN22660" ></A ><H2 >Description</H2 ><DIV CLASS="funcsynopsis" ><P ></P ><CODE CLASS="FUNCDEF" >int preg_match</CODE >(string pattern, string subject, array [<SPAN CLASS="optional" >matches</SPAN >]);<P ></P ></DIV ><P > Searches <TT CLASS="parameter" ><I >subject</I ></TT > for a match to the regular expression given in <TT CLASS="parameter" ><I >pattern</I ></TT >.</P ><P > If <TT CLASS="parameter" ><I >matches</I ></TT > is provided, then it is filled with the results of search. $matches[0] will contain the text that match the full pattern, $matches[1] will have the text that matched the first captured parenthesized subpattern, and so on.</P ><P > Returns true if a match for <TT CLASS="parameter" ><I >pattern</I ></TT > was found in the subject string, or false if not match was found or an error occurred.</P ><P > <TABLE WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" CLASS="EXAMPLE" ><TR ><TD ><DIV CLASS="example" ><P ><B >Example 1. Getting the page number out of a string</B ></P ><TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><PRE CLASS="programlisting" > 1 2 if (preg_match("/page\s+#(\d+)/i", "Go to page #9.", $parts)) 3 print "Next page is $parts[1]"; 4 else 5 print "Page not found."; 6 </PRE ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></TD ></TR ></TABLE > See also <A HREF="function.preg-match-all.html" ><B CLASS="function" >preg_match_all()</B ></A >, <A HREF="function.preg-replace.html" ><B CLASS="function" >preg_replace()</B ></A >, and <A HREF="function.preg-split.html" ><B CLASS="function" >preg_split()</B ></A >.</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="ref.pcre.html" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="manual.html" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="function.preg-match-all.html" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >Perl-compatible Regular Expression functions</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="ref.pcre.html" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >preg_match_all</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >