regular expression to get sub string via php

Question

How can I use a regular expression in the substr() PHP function to get a substring matched by a pattern?

Edited:

example:

$name = 'hello [*kitty*],how good is today';

I want to get what is between [ .... ] placeholder.

Answer 1

substr() only matches whole strings. You are looking for preg_match() .

Update :

$name = 'hello [*kitty*],how good is today';
preg_match( '/\[(.*?)\]/', $name, $match );
var_dump( $match );

You can find the name in $match[1] . I suggest you read up on regular expressions to understand preg_match() .

Answer 2

Try this:

$matches = array();
preg_match("/\[([^]]*)\]/", 'hello [*kitty*],how good is today', $matches);
print_r($matches);

Oops, fixed it now :)