How do detect an expected incorrect string in a string line

Question

I have a large string example

newboay1fineboy8badboiy12 boy4andothersfollows...

my problem is how do i detect an incorrect boy from each of the string line output example my expected output should be like: boay1 boiy12 this my tried code:

$string = "newboay1fineboy8badboiy12 boy4andothersfollows...";
$string = preg_match_all("/bo\d+/", $string, $results);
foreach($results[0] as $val){
    if($val !== boy) {
        echo $val;
    }

but i get no output in return. Big thanks for your time and impact in my soluction

Answer 1

You may fix you code as follows:

$string = "newboay1fineboy8badboiy12 boy4andothersfollows...";
$string = preg_match_all("/(bo\pL+)\d+/", $string, $results,  PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
foreach($results as $val){
    if($val[1] !== "boy") {
        echo $val[0] . "\n";
    }
}

See the PHP demo.

The point is to match bo, then any 1+ letters and capture that part, and then just match 1+ digits. See the regex (demo):

'~(bo\pL+)\d+~'

Details

• (bo\pL+) - Group 1: bo and 1+ letters
• \d+ - 1+ digits.

Inside the foreach, $val[1] contains the value captured into Group 1, and if it is not equal to boy, you may get the whole match accessing $val[0] in your if statement.