Description
int 
ereg ( string pattern, string string [, array ®s] )
Note: 
      preg_match(), which uses a Perl-compatible 
      regular expression syntax, is often a faster alternative to
      ereg().
     
     Searches a string for matches to the regular
     expression given in pattern in a case-sensitive
     way.
    
     If matches are found for parenthesized substrings of
     pattern and the function is called with
     the third argument regs, the matches will
     be stored in the elements of the array
     regs. $regs[1] will contain the substring
     which starts at the first left parenthesis; $regs[2] will contain
     the substring starting at the second, and so on. $regs[0] will
     contain a copy of the complete string matched.
    
Note: 
      Up to (and including) PHP 4.1.0 $regs will be
      filled with exactly ten elements, even though more or fewer than
      ten parenthesized substrings may actually have matched. This has
      no effect on ereg()'s ability to match more
      substrings. If no matches are found, $regs
      will not be altered by ereg(). 
     
     Returns the length of the matched string if a match for pattern was
     found in string, or FALSE if no matches
     were found or an error occurred.
     If the optional parameter regs was not passed or
     the length of the matched string is 0, this function returns 1.
    
     The following code snippet takes a date in ISO format
     (YYYY-MM-DD) and prints it in DD.MM.YYYY format:
    
     
Example 1. ereg() example 
<?php if (ereg ("([0-9]{4})-([0-9]{1,2})-([0-9]{1,2})", $date, $regs)) {     echo "$regs[3].$regs[2].$regs[1]"; } else {     echo "Invalid date format: $date"; } ?>
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     See also eregi(), ereg_replace(),
     eregi_replace(), preg_match(),
     strpos(), and strstr().