php string matching with wildcard *?
There is no need for preg_match
here. PHP has a wildcard comparison function, specifically made for such cases:
And fnmatch('dir/*/file', 'dir/folder1/file')
would likely already work for you. But beware that the *
wildcard would likewise add further slashes, like preg_match would.
You should just use .*
instead.
$pattern = str_replace( '*' , '.*', $pattern); //> This is the important replace
Edit: Also your ^
and $
were in the wrong order.
<?phpfunction stringMatchWithWildcard($source,$pattern) { $pattern = preg_quote($pattern,'/'); $pattern = str_replace( '\*' , '.*', $pattern); return preg_match( '/^' . $pattern . '$/i' , $source );}$mystring = 'dir/folder1/file';$pattern = 'dir/*/file';echo stringMatchWithWildcard($mystring,$pattern); $mystring = 'string bl#abla;y';$pattern = 'string*y'; echo stringMatchWithWildcard($mystring,$pattern);
Working demo: http://www.ideone.com/mGqp2
.+?
Causes non-greedy matching for all characters. This is NOT equal to "*" becuase it will not match the empty string.
The following pattern will match the empty string too:
.*?
so...
stringMatchWithWildcard ("hello", "hel*lo"); // will give true