From my November 3, 2011 talk at MNPHP. Regular expressions are a powerful tool available in nearly every programming language or platform, including PHP. I go over the history of POSIX vs. PCRE, examples in PHP, and optimizations on how to write faster expressions.

1. Regular Expressions for the
Web Application Developer
By Andrew Kandels

2. Regular Expressions
Regular expressions provide a concise, flexible means for
matching strings of text, such as words or patterns of
characters.
POSIX PCRE
Portable Operating System Interface Perl Compatible Regular Expressions
• Traditional Unix regular • Perl 5 Extended Features
expression syntax • Native C Extension
• Generally Faster
• PHP’s ereg_ functions • Optimization Qualifiers
• Basic and extended versions Used by:
• Programming languages
• Apache and other servers

3. Why Use Them?
• Input Validation
• Input Filtering
• Search and Replace
• Parsing and Data Extraction
• Dynamic Recursion
• Automation

4. In PHP, POSIX = Deprecated
ereg_* functions are now deprecated in newer versions of
PHP.
Switching to preg_* is generally pain free. Pain points:
• Different matching criteria (greed)
• preg_* requires delimiters
• Different characters require escape sequences
• preg favors option modifiers over functions

5. Anatomy of a PHP Regular Expression
/foo/i
• Delimiters
• Pattern to match
• Options/modifiers
preg_replace(
„/(href|src)=„([^‟])*‟/i‟,
„1=“2”‟,
$str
);

6. PHP Regular Expressions
• Must use a delimiter: ! @ # /
• Use PHP’s single quotes (no escaping ’s)
preg_match Match against a pattern and
extract text
preg_replace Like str_replace with a pattern
(and sub-patterns)
preg_match_all Like preg_match, but an array
and count for every match
preg_split Like explode() but with a
pattern
preg_quote Escapes text for use in a regular
expression

7. Modifiers and Options
i PCRE_CASELESS – Ignores case
m PCRE_MULTILINE – Ignores new-lines
s PCRE_DOTALL – New lines count with dots
(.)
U Don’t be greedy

8. Performance Killers
Slow-downs in performance generally come from:
• Alternation, the pipe/OR operator (|)
Use [abcd] when possible over (a|b|c|d)
• Multi-line (PCRE_DOTALL or /s)
• Recursion: (d+)d*
Use lengths when possible
It’s not that slow!

9. Sub-Patterns
Sub-Patterns allow you to extract relevant text from searches:
• For preg_replace, use either 1 or $1 in your replacement string
• Sub-patterns are left-most indexed by first left parenthesis “(“

10. Named Sub-Patterns
(?P<name>pattern)

11. Lookaheads
Are zero-match so they won’t modify your cursor or be included in any sub-patterns.
(?=pattern)
Pattern can be any valid regex

12. Lookbehinds
(?<!pattern)
Accepts some basic regex

13. Multi-Line Processing
/msU
(Multi-line, include newlines with dots, non-greedy)

14. Once-Only Sub-Patterns
Eliminates slow recursion from wildcard searching.
Less scans = more speed.

15. Greedy
By default, PCRE returns the biggest match.
100,000 runs took 0.2791 seconds

16. Non-Greedy with Modifier
The /U modifier returns the SMALLEST match.
100,000 runs took 0.2638 seconds
(a little better, and it’s right)

17. Restrictive Wild-Carding
No greedy flag needed, faster without broad wild-cards.
100,000 runs took 0.2271 seconds
(fastest yet, no options needed)

18. grep
Use grep –E or egrep for extended regular expressions (+, ?, |)
and advanced functionality.
-A n Print the next n lines after each match.
-B n Print the previous n lines before each match.
-i Ignore case
-m n Stop after n matches
-r Recursively search the file system
-n Show line numbers
-v Only show lines that don’t match

19. sed
Use –r (-E on OS X / FreeBSD) for extended regular expressions.

20. The End
Web: http://andrewkandels.com
Mail: mailto:akandels@gmail.com
Twitter: @andrewkandels