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          


        

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().