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phpregexnumberspreg-matchletter

PHP regex to match all single letters followed by numeric value in string

I'm trying to get the a regex running for the following type of strings: one upper case letter followed by a numeric value. The string can consist of multiple of these letter-numeric-value combinations. Here some examples and my expected output:

A12B8Y9CC10
-> output [0 => 12, 1 => 8, 2 => 9] (10 is ignored, because there are two letters)
V5C8I17
-> output [0 => 5, 1 => 8, 2 => 17]
KK18II9
-> output [] (because KK and II are always two letters followed by numeric values)
I8VV22ZZ4S9U2
-> output [0 => 8, 1 => 9, 2 => 2] (VV and ZZ are ignored)
A18Z12I
-> output [0 => 18, 1 => 12] (I is ignored, because no numeric value follows)

I tried to reach this by the following regex using preg_match: /^([A-Z]{1}\d{1,)$/

But it doesn't give the expected output. Can you please help me, how to solve this?

Thanks and best regards!

Solution

  • You may use this regex in php using preg_match_all:

    preg_match_all('/(?<![a-zA-Z])[a-zA-Z]\K\d+/', $string, $matches);

    Resulting in array $matches[0] to return all the matches.

    RegEx Demo

    RegEx Details:

    • (?<![a-zA-Z]): Make sure we don't have a letter before current position
    • [a-zA-Z]: Match a letter
    • \K: Reset match info
    • \d+: Match 1+ digits