How do you perform a preg_match where the pattern is an array, in php?

Question

I have an array full of patterns that I need matched. Any way to do that, other than a for() loop? Im trying to do it in the least CPU intensive way, since I will be doing

Answer 1

If your patterns don't contain many whitespaces, another option would be to eschew the arrays and use the /x modifier. Now your list of regular expressions would look like this:

$regex = "/
pattern1|   # search for occurences of 'pattern1'
pa..ern2|   # wildcard search for occurences of 'pa..ern2'
pat[ ]tern| # search for 'pat tern', whitespace is escaped
mypat       # Note that the last pattern does NOT have a pipe char
/x";

With the /x modifier, whitespace is completely ignored, except when in a character class or preceded by a backslash. Comments like above are also allowed.

This would avoid the looping through the array.