tags: php regex
title: preg family in PHP

```php
preg_match('/regex/',$subject);
```

# Split
```php
// $limit is max number of substrings returned,
// one more than what you'd use in Python
preg_split('/regex/',$subject,$limit,$flags);
```
## Flags
From [the official docs](https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.preg-split.php). `$flags` can be any combination of the following flags (combined with the | bitwise operator):

* `PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY`: If this flag is set, only non-empty pieces will be returned by preg_split().
* `PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE`: If this flag is set, parenthesized expression in the delimiter pattern will be captured and returned as well.
* `PREG_SPLIT_OFFSET_CAPTURE`: If this flag is set, for every occurring match the appendant string offset will also be returned. Note that this changes the return value in an array where every element is an array consisting of the matched string at offset 0 and its string offset into subject at offset 1.