John Davidson

Message:

I need (in PHP) to split a sententse by the word that cannot be the first or the last one in the sentence. Say the word is "pression" and here is my regex

/^.+?(?=[\s\.\,\:\;])pression(?=[\s\.\,\:\;]).+$/i

Live here: https://regex101.com/r/CHAhKj/1/

First, it doesn't match.
Next, I think - it is at all possible to split that way? I tryed simplified example

print_r(preg_split('/^.+pizza.+$/', 'my pizza is cool'));

live here http://sandbox.onlinephpfunctions.com/code/10b674900fc1ef44ec79bfaf80e83fe1f4248d02

and it prints an array of 2 empty strings, when I expect
['my ', ' is cool']

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My Answer:
Regex with lookaheads in PHP can be useful for more complex pattern matching and extracting specific information from a string. Lookaheads allow you to check for a pattern without actually consuming the characters in the string, which can be helpful in cases where you need to match a certain pattern but don't want to include it in the final match result.

For example, you can use a positive lookahead to match a string that is followed by a specific pattern, without including the pattern itself in the match result. This can be useful for extracting information from a string without including unnecessary characters.

Overall, regex with lookaheads can help you write more precise and efficient patterns for matching and extracting information from strings in PHP.