Regex capture group 2 to capture what does not match capture group 1

Question

I am wanting to capture Owner or Builder in group 1, otherwise any text up until hyphen and/or space followed by a digit is encountered in group 2, then any digit til end of line in group 3 from the following text:-

PRD Hervey Bay 07 2525 1919
RG Sprake & Co Maryborough 4141 2424
Owner Robert - 0429 966 391
Owner Maureen - 07 8888 4444 - 0422000 111
Owner Wayne - 0430 555 666
Builder Scott - 0444 555 777

The expression I am currently using:-

/(Owner|Builder)([^-]+)-|\s+(\d.*)/gm

Does not match 'PRD Hervey Bay' and 'RG Sprake & Co Maryborough' in group 2.

Any help appreciated!

Trent.

Answer 1

You can use this regex to get the results you want:

/^(Owner |Builder )?(.*?)(?=-| \d)[- ]+(.*)$/m

It looks for (optionally) the string Owner or Builder ; followed by some minimal number of characters until a - or a space followed by a digit; followed by some number of - or space, then characters until end of line. To use in PHP:

$text = <<<EOD
PRD Hervey Bay 07 2525 1919
RG Sprake &amp; Co Maryborough 4141 2424
Owner Robert - 0429 966 391
Owner Maureen - 07 8888 4444 - 0422000 111
Owner Wayne - 0430 555 666
Builder Scott - 0444 555 777
EOD;
preg_match_all('/^(Owner |Builder )?(.*?)(?=-| \d)[- ]+(.*)$/m', $text, $matches);
print_r($matches);

Output:

Array ( 
  [0] => Array (
    [0] => PRD Hervey Bay 07 2525 1919
    [1] => RG Sprake & Co Maryborough 4141 2424
    [2] => Owner Robert - 0429 966 391
    [3] => Owner Maureen - 07 8888 4444 - 0422000 111
    [4] => Owner Wayne - 0430 555 666
    [5] => Builder Scott - 0444 555 777 
    )
  [1] => Array (
    [0] => 
    [1] =>
    [2] => Owner
    [3] => Owner
    [4] => Owner
    [5] => Builder
    )
  [2] => Array (
    [0] => PRD Hervey Bay
    [1] => RG Sprake & Co Maryborough
    [2] => Robert
    [3] => Maureen
    [4] => Wayne
    [5] => Scott
    )
  [3] => Array (
    [0] => 07 2525 1919
    [1] => 4141 2424
    [2] => 0429 966 391
    [3] => 07 8888 4444 - 0422000 111
    [4] => 0430 555 666
    [5] => 0444 555 777
    )
  )

Demo on 3v4l.org

Note that this does leave some spaces and - in the last group, you can most easily remove them (if desired) by using array_walk :

array_walk($matches[3], function (&$v) { $v = preg_replace('/[^\d]/', '', $v); });

Demo on 3v4l.org