preg-match-all

I would like to know what the preg_match and preg_match_all functions do and how to use them. preg_match stops looking after the first match. preg_match_all , on the other hand, continues to look until it finishes processing the entire string. Once match is found, it uses the remainder of the string to try and apply another match. http://php.net/manual/en/function.preg-match-all.php Sumit Both preg_match and preg_match_all functions in PHP use Perl compatible regular expressions. You can watch this series to fully understand Perl compatible regular expressions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v

I'm trying to get all substrings matched with a multiplier: $list = '1,2,3,4'; preg_match_all('|\d+(,\d+)*|', $list, $matches); print_r($matches); This example returns, as expected, the last match in [1] : Array ( [0] => Array ( [0] => 1,2,3,4 ) [1] => Array ( [0] => ,4 ) ) However, I would like to get all strings matched by (,\d+) , to get something like: Array ( [0] => ,2 [1] => ,3 [2] => ,4 ) Is there a way to do this with a single function such as preg_match_all() ? Benjamin According to Kobi (see comments above): PHP has no support for captures of the same group Therefore this question

This question already has an answer here: Get repeated matches with preg_match_all() 6 answers Update/Note: I think what I'm probably looking for is to get the captures of a group in PHP. Referenced: PCRE regular expressions using named pattern subroutines. (Read carefully:) I have a string that contains a variable number of segments (simplified): $subject = 'AA BB DD '; // could be 'AA BB DD CC EE ' as well I would like now to match the segments and return them via the matches array: $pattern = '/^(([a-z]+) )+$/i'; $result = preg_match_all($pattern, $subject, $matches); This will only return