Get first number in a string after the first occurrence of identifier

Question

I\'m working on a function that gets a string like this:

identifier 20 j. - cat: text text text aaaa ffffdd ..... cccc 60\' - text, 2008

and

Answer 1

You can use a regular expression for this:

$matches = array();
preg_match('/identifier\s*(\d+)/', $string, $matches);
var_dump($matches);

\s* is whitespace. (\d+) matches a number.

You can wrap it in a function:

function matchIdentifier($string) {
    $matches = array();
    if (!preg_match('/identifier\s*(\d+)/', $string, $matches)) {
        return null;
    }
    return $matches[1];
}