Extract all hex colors from a multiline CSS string

Question

I'm trying to write regex that extracts all hex colors from CSS code.

This is what I have now:

Code:

$css = <<<CSS

/* Do not match me: #abcdefgh; I am longer than needed. */

.foo
{
    color: #cccaaa; background-color:#ababab;
}

#bar
{
    background-color:#123456
}
CSS;

preg_match_all('/#(?:[0-9a-fA-F]{6})/', $css, $matches);

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => #abcdef
            [1] => #cccaaa
            [2] => #ababab
            [3] => #123456
        )

)

I don't know how to specify that only those colors are matched which ends with punctuation, whitespace or newline.

Answer 1

Since a hex color code may also consist of 3 characters, you can define a mandatory group and an optional group of letters and digits, so the long and elaborate notation would be:

/#([a-f]|[A-F]|[0-9]){3}(([a-f]|[A-F]|[0-9]){3})?\b/

Or if you want a nice and short version, you can say that you want either 1 or 2 groups of 3 alphanumeric characters, and that they should be matched case insensitively (/i).

/#([a-f0-9]{3}){1,2}\b/i

Instead of [a-f0-9] you can also write [[:xdigit:]], if the regex engine supports this posix character class. In this case you can skip the /i at the end, and the whole formula is only two characters more, but arguably more descriptive.

/#([[:xdigit:]]{3}){1,2}\b/