php man page for ereg

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ereg - Regular expression match

SYNOPSIS
       int ereg (string  $pattern, string  $string, [array  &$regs])

DESCRIPTION
	Searches a $string for matches to the regular expression given in $pattern in a case-sensitive way.

       Warning

	      This function has been DEPRECATED as of PHP 5.3.0. Relying on this feature is highly discouraged.

PARAMETERS
	      o $pattern
		- Case sensitive regular expression.

	      o $string
		- The input string.

	      o $regs
		-  If  matches	are  found  for parenthesized substrings of $pattern and the function is called with the third argument $regs, the
		matches will be stored in the elements of the array $regs. $regs[1] will contain the substring which  starts  at  the  first  left
		parenthesis;  $regs[2]	will contain the substring starting at the second, and so on. $regs[0] will contain a copy of the complete
		string matched.

RETURN VALUES
	Returns the length of the matched string if a match for $pattern was found in $string, or FALSE if no  matches	were  found  or  an  error
       occurred.

	If the optional parameter $regs was not passed or the length of the matched string is 0, this function returns 1.

CHANGELOG
       +--------+---------------------------------------------------+
       |Version |						    |
       |	|						    |
       |	|		     Description		    |
       |	|						    |
       +--------+---------------------------------------------------+
       | 4.1.0	|						    |
       |	|						    |
       |	|  Up  to  (and  including) PHP 4.1.0 $regs will be |
       |	| filled with exactly  ten  elements,  even  though |
       |	| more	or  fewer than ten parenthesized substrings |
       |	| may actually have matched. This has no effect  on |
       |	| ereg(3)'s ability to match more substrings. If no |
       |	| matches are found, $regs will not be	altered  by |
       |	| ereg(3).					    |
       |	|						    |
       +--------+---------------------------------------------------+
EXAMPLES
       Example #1

	      ereg(3) example

	       The following code snippet takes a date in ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD) and prints it in DD.MM.YYYY format:

	      <?php
	      if (ereg ("([0-9]{4})-([0-9]{1,2})-([0-9]{1,2})", $date, $regs)) {
		  echo "$regs[3].$regs[2].$regs[1]";
	      } else {
		  echo "Invalid date format: $date";
	      }
	      ?>

NOTES
       Note

	      As  of PHP 5.3.0, the regex extension is deprecated in favor of the PCRE extension. Calling this function will issue an E_DEPRECATED
	      notice. See the list of differences for help on converting to PCRE.

       Tip

	      ereg(3) is deprecated as of PHP 5.3.0. preg_match(3) is the suggested alternative to this function.

SEE ALSO
       eregi(3), ereg_replace(3), eregi_replace(3), preg_match(3), strpos(3), strstr(3), quotemeta(3).

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