get wildcards in pattern as specific variables with preg_match

Question

I am trying to get specific information out of an input string into variables by using wildcards in a match pattern.

$input   = "my name is John Smith and I live in Las Vegas";
$pattern = "my name is * and I live in *";

I understand preg_match will give me all wildcards with (\w+), so replacing * in the pattern with (\w+) gives me "John Smith" and "Las Vegas" but how would I go about giving a variable name in the pattern so I can do

$pattern = "my name is *name and I live in *city";

and get the result put into variables like so:

$name = "John Smith"
$city = "Las Vegas"

any help to find the corresponding preg_match pattern will be highly appreciated! Also I wonder if the * character is a wise choice. Maybe $ or % makes more sense.

Answer 1

here it is ( in php ) :

<?php
$input   = "my name is John Smith and I live in Las Vegas";
$pattern = "/my\sname\sis\s(?P<name>[a-zA-Z\s]+)\sand\sI\sLive\sin\s(?P<loc>[a-zA-Z\s]+)/si";
preg_match($pattern,$input,$res);
$name = $res["name"];
$loc = $res["loc"];
var_dump($res);

result : https://eval.in/498117