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# ereg

ereg -- regular expression match

## Description

`int ereg`(string pattern, string string, array [regs]);

Searchs `string` for matches to the regular expression given in `pattern`.

If matches are found for parenthesized substrings of `pattern` and the function is called with the third argument `regs`, the matches will be stored in the elements of `regs`. $regs[1] will contain the substring which starts at the first left parenthesis; $regs[2] will contain the substring starting at the second, and so on. $regs[0] will contain a copy of `string`.

Searching is case sensitive.

Returns true if a match for pattern was found in string, or false if no matches were found or an error occurred.

The following code snippet takes a date in ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD) and prints it in DD.MM.YYYY format:

Example 1. ereg() example
    if ( ereg( "([0-9]{4})-([0-9]{1,2})-([0-9]{1,2})", $date, $regs ) ) {
        echo "$regs[3].$regs[2].$regs[1]";
    } else {
        echo "Invalid date format: $date";
    }

See also eregi(), ereg_replace(), and eregi_replace().

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