Mastering Regular Expressions, 3rd Edition

10PHP

PHP’s popularity exploded during the early phases of the late-90s web boom and remains wildly popular today. One reason for this popularity is that even non-engineers can start using its basic features with very little preparation. Yet, despite this approachability, PHP also provides a vast cornucopia of advanced features and functions sure to please the seasoned engineer. PHP supports regular expressions, of course, and does so with no less than three separate, unrelated regex engines.

The three regex engines in PHP are the “preg,” “ereg,” and “mb_ereg” engines. This book covers the preg suite of functions. It’s backed by an NFA engine that is generally superior, in both features and speed, to the other two. (“preg” is normally pronounced “p-reg.”)

Reliance on Early Chapters   Before looking at what’s in this chapter, it’s important to emphasize that it relies heavily on the base material in Chapters 1 through 6. Readers interested only in PHP may be inclined to start their reading with this chapter, but I want to encourage them not to miss the benefits of the preface (in particular, the typographical conventions) and the earlier chapters: Chapters 1, 2, and 3 introduce basic concepts, features, and techniques involved with regular expressions, while Chapters 4, 5, and 6 offer important keys to regex understanding that directly apply to PHP’s preg engine. Among the important concepts covered in earlier chapters are the base mechanics of how an NFA regex engine goes about ...