Why doesn't this regex capture group repeat for each match?

Question

I\'m testing this on regex101.com

Regex: ^\\+([0-9A-Za-z-]+)(?:\\.([0-9A-Za-z-]+))*$

Test string: +beta-bar.baz-bz.fd.zz

The st

Answer 1

The reason why that happens is because when using a quantifier on a capture group and it is captured n times, only the last captured text gets stored in the buffer and returned at the end.

Instead of matching those parts, you can preg_split the string you have with a simple regex [+.]:

$str = "+beta-bar.baz-bz.fd.zz";
$a = preg_split('/[+.]/', $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);

See IDEONE demo

Result:

Array
(
    [0] => beta-bar
    [1] => baz-bz
    [2] => fd
    [3] => zz
)