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# ereg

(PHP 3, PHP 4 )

ereg -- Regular expression match

## Description

int ereg ( string pattern, string string [, array regs])

> Note: preg_match(), which uses a Perl-compatible regular expression syntax, is often a faster alternative to ereg().

Searches a `string` for matches to the regular expression given in `pattern`.

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.

> Note: Up to (and including) PHP 4.1.0 `$regs` will be filled with exactly ten elements, even though more or fewer than ten parenthesized substrings may actually have matched. This has no effect on ereg()'s ability to match more substrings. If no matches are found, `$regs` will not be altered by ereg().

Searching is case sensitive.

Returns `TRUE` if a match for `pattern` was found in `string`, or `FALSE` if no matches were found or an error occurred.

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

Example 1. ereg() Example
    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";
    }

See also eregi(), ereg_replace(), eregi_replace(), and preg_match().

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