Hey,

Im trying to match the first part of an address,

e.g: 
22b street name
92 street name

This is what i have so far....

$address = "22b; Broad St; Staple Hill";
//$address = "22; Broad St; Staple Hill";

$addressLine = explode(";",$address);
       

if(preg_match("^[0-9]+([a-zA-Z])^", $addressLine[0]))
{
  echo '<b>address line 1 has been matched as</b> '.$addressLine[0];
}
else
{
  echo 'did not matched as '.$addressLine[0];
}

 Problem is, its matching 22b, but not just 22.

Any help greatly appreciated!

Daz

Remove the second ^ in your pattern, if desired to match end of string replace the second ^ with a $.

I tried your suggestion, but get this error

Warning: preg_match() [function.preg-match]: No ending delimiter '^' found in /home/public_html/test.php on line 8
did not match as 22

I see you also left off the delimiters, it was interpreting your ^ as delimiters.

if(preg_match("/^[0-9]+([a-zA-Z])/", $addressLine[0]))

or

if(preg_match("/^[0-9]+([A-Z])/i", $addressLine[0]))

see:

http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.preg-match.php

thanks for the heads up.

 I tried what you suggested, but it still wont match "22"

I have reviewed that php.net link but it doesnt explain about the specific regex im stuck on.

So far i have this....

if(preg_match("/^[0-9]+([a-zA-Z])/", $addressLine[0]))

It matches 22b.........but not 22 by itself.........any ideas please?

----------------------------------------------------------------------
  ^                        the beginning of the string
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  [0-9]+                   any character of: '0' to '9' (1 or more
                           times (matching the most amount possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  (                        group and capture to \1:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    [a-zA-Z]                 any character of: 'a' to 'z', 'A' to 'Z'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  )                        end of \1
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you want to make the ([a-zA-Z]) optional you will need add a ? to the end:

if(preg_match("/^[0-9]+([a-zA-Z])?/", $addressLine[0]))

if(preg_match("/^([0-9]+)([a-zA-Z])/",$addressLine[0],$res)){

echo '<pre>'.print_r($res,true);

}

fulleffect:

thanks for the heads up.

 I tried what you suggested, but it still wont match "22"

I have reviewed that php.net link but it doesnt explain about the specific regex im stuck on.

So far i have this....

if(preg_match("/^[0-9]+([a-zA-Z])/", $addressLine[0]))

It matches 22b.........but not 22 by itself.........any ideas please?

Make the a-zA-Z reluctant:

/^[0-9]+[a-zA-Z]?/

thanks for your help ddrudik !!

prometheuzz: What do you mean by reluctant?

I understand what you've changed, but i dont know why?

([a-zA-Z])   versus    [a-zA-Z]     ? 

fulleffect:

thanks for your help ddrudik !!

prometheuzz: What do you mean by reluctant?

I understand what you've changed, but i dont know why?

Err, you understand, but you don't understand?

fulleffect:

([a-zA-Z])   versus    [a-zA-Z]     ? 

The parenthesis are for grouping characters, I didn't see you use the grouping, so I left them out. More info: http://www.regular-expressions.info/brackets.html

And the '?' is a reluctant/optional/un-greedy quantifier. More info: http://www.regular-expressions.info/optional.html

thanks again prometheuzz!

This now works perfectly!

Although, if i change the address to   22bbb, it also matches.

How would i limit that to just 1 letter after the number?

I have tried  if(preg_match("/^[0-9]+[a-zA-Z]{1}?/", $addressLine[0]))

 But it still matches more than 1 letter?

That's because your regex will look for text starting with a number followed by an optional letter. The string "12", "12b" and "12bxc" all match that criteria. Try something like this:

/^\d++[a-zA-Z]?\s/

The \s in the regex denotes a white space character.