I’m trying to catch a tag with a special syntax in a file with this regex :
([a-z0-9 >}\/])(\{(var)\:([a-z0-9\_\/\-\.]+)([\?0-9]+)*\})([a-z0-9 {<\/])
The tag looks like :
{var:contactText}
But as you can see in my regex, i want to catch what’s before and after the {var:something}. My expression work fine except when the expression is alone in a line.
I’ve had m flag to prevent the problem but that’s still not working.
Live exemple : https://regex101.com/r/6T6OJm/1/
Am I missing something ? It seems to be the last part with ([a-z0-9 {<\/]) wich doesn’t accept line break, so what’s the solution ?
>Solution :
Like the cat, the "multiline" modifier is a false friend. The m modifier doesn’t mean the pattern will run magically over multiple lines, It only changes the meaning of the ^ and $ anchors (from start/end of the string to start/end of the line).
All what you need is to figure potential white characters using the \s class (that includes also the carriage return \r and the newline \n characters).
~
([a-z0-9 >}/])
\s* ( { (var) : ([a-z0-9_/.-]+) ([?0-9]+)? } ) \s*
([a-z0-9 {</])
~xi
Note that many characters in the pattern doesn’t need to be escaped.
Since the pattern is a bit long, I used the x modifier to not take in account spaces in the pattern: it’s more readable.
Not sure that all the capture groups are useful.