PHP Regex Match Example

Validate and extract text with regular expressions and preg_match(). Edit the code below and press Run to execute it with real PHP in your browser.

Code Editor

<?php
$email = "user@example.com";
$pattern = '/^[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,}$/';

if (preg_match($pattern, $email)) {
    echo "Valid email: $email\n";
} else {
    echo "Invalid email\n";
}

// Extract matches
$text = "Price: $19.99";
preg_match('/\$([0-9.]+)/', $text, $matches);
echo "Extracted price: $" . $matches[1];

Output

Valid email: [email protected]
Extracted price: $19.99

How this regex match example works

preg_match() returns 1 when the pattern matches and stores captured groups in $matches. Patterns are written in single quotes so that \. and \$ reach the regex engine unchanged. For real email validation, filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL) is more reliable than a hand-written pattern.