How can i match a substring in a big string with a regex?

Question

I have a IPv6 address with port also [2401:2401:2401:2401:2401:2401:2401:2401]:1234. I want to get the IPv6 address only in PHP. I am trying to do:

$str = "[2401:2401:2401:2401:2401:2401:2401:2401]:1234";
preg_match("[]", $str, $matches);
echo $matches[1];

But this does not get me the proper result. I want matches[1] to contain only "2401:2401:2401:2401:2401:2401:2401:2401".

FYI: Paste your code in the question, don't use pastebin (unless the code is *way* too big to fit in the question, in which case, copy a snippet into the question). — Rocket Hazmat, Jun 02 '14 at 18:33
Not sure why marked this question as duplicate as my question is to know the answer in PHP instead of a regular regex. — user1159517, Jun 02 '14 at 18:44
A regex is a regex. The answers from that question should work here, too. — Rocket Hazmat, Jun 02 '14 at 18:45

Adi Ulici · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-02T18:47:59.573

1

The preg_match you're using won't work. You need something like this:

preg_match("/\[([0-9a-fA-F:]+)\]/", $str, $matches);

edited Jun 02 '14 at 18:47

answered Jun 02 '14 at 18:32

Adi Ulici

1

My IPv6 could contain alphabets also. – user1159517 Jun 02 '14 at 18:40
`[0-9a-fA-F:]+` hexadecimal – Kaii Jun 02 '14 at 18:42
preg_match("/\[.*\]/", $str, $matches); I ran this and got matches[0] = [1:2:3:4:5:6], but i want to exclude the square brackets also. – user1159517 Jun 02 '14 at 18:42
Try the code I posted now and check out what you'll get in `$matches[1]` – Adi Ulici Jun 02 '14 at 18:44
@AdiUlici: I want to exclude the [ ] square brackets out of the result. Any idea how to do that? – user1159517 Jun 02 '14 at 18:45
I updated my answer now and put a tested version in which you'll have the wanted string in `$matches[1]` – Adi Ulici Jun 02 '14 at 18:48

1 Answers1