Usage

To create a new regex, supply the Regex constructor with a pattern (including delimiters) and a label. Once created, you can use the getMatch and getMatches methods just as you would with the function-oriented versions of this code. Also, the match method takes a second optional boolean parameter called “$matchAll”. When set to true, the behavior is modified to use preg_match_all under the covers.

For example,:

$pattern = '/foo/';
$label = 'foostring';
$regex = new Regex($pattern, $label);
$result = $regex->match('some foo string');
$fooMatch = $regex->getMatch[1];

The Regex object also has an attribute regarding case-sensitivity. setCaseSensitive sets the value, isCaseSensitive retrieves the value.

There are three static methods in the class that can be useful. One is validatePattern, which returns a bool given a pattern. The other is escapeString. Under the covers, this is preg_quote. In my view, preg_quote is entirely misnamed since it had nothing to do with quoting anything. It escapes runtime-generated patterns. See the comments in the function definition of escapeString for more details. The last is validateDelimiter. The rules for what constitutes a valid delimiter are not easy to remember, so you can use this as a diagnostic if you like.