Pro Parsing Techniques With PHP, Part Three: Using Regular Expressions

This article is dedicated to regular expressions. Regular expressions, or sometimes simply called regex, represent a powerful set of tools which allow developers to split strings, perform character substitutions, and extract text based on matched patterns. The patterns, used in regular expressions, are an actual language that describe combinations of type castings and values that match the text you want to split, substitute, or extract. Regular expressions are an enormously powerful tool for the developer who understands them.