Regex to match 2 or more words

Question

I have a regex that tries to match for 2 or more words, but it isn't working as it's suppose to. What am I doing wrong?

$string = "i dont know , do you know?";
preg_match("~([a-z']+\b){2,}~", $string, $match);

echo "<pre>";
print_r($match);
echo "</pre>";

Array ( i dont know )

Array ( )

Answer 1

This will match for string that contains exactly 2 words or more:

/([a-zA-Z]+\\s?\\b){2,}/g you can go http://www.regexr.com/ and test it

PHP:

$string = "i dont know , do you know?";
preg_match("/([a-zA-Z]+\s?\b){2,}/", $string, $match);

echo "<pre>";
print_r($match);
echo "</pre>";

Note: do not use the /g in the PHP code

Answer 2

This one should work: ~([\\w']+(\\s+|[^\\w\\s])){2,}~g , which also match string like "I do!"

Test it here

Answer 3

I think you are missing how the {} are used, to match two words

preg_match_all('/([a-z]+)/i', 'one two', $match );

if( $match && count($match[1]) > 1 ){
         ....

}

Match is

array (
  0 => 
  array (
    0 => 'one',
    1 => 'two',
  ),
  1 => 
  array (
    0 => 'one',
    1 => 'two',
  ),
)

Match will have all matches of the pattern, so then its trivial to just count them up...

When using

        preg_match('/(\w+){2,}/', 'one two', $match );

Match is

 array (
      0 => 'one',
      1 => 'e',
 )

clearly not what you want.

The only way I see with preg_match is with this /([az]+\\s+[az]+)/

preg_match ([a-z']+\\b){2,} http://www.phpliveregex.com/p/frM

preg_match ([az]+\\s+[az]+) http://www.phpliveregex.com/p/frO

Suggested

preg_match_all ([az]+) http://www.phpliveregex.com/p/frR ( may have to select preg_match_all on the site )