How can one handle varying input data structures when using preg_match_all in PHP?

When using preg_match_all in PHP, one way to handle varying input data structures is to use the preg_quote function to escape special characters in the input pattern. This ensures that the pattern will match literal characters without interpreting them as special regex symbols. By doing this, you can prevent unexpected behavior or errors when processing different input data structures. 

$input = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.";
$pattern = "/quick brown (.*?) over the lazy/";

$escaped_pattern = preg_quote($pattern, '/');
preg_match_all($escaped_pattern, $input, $matches);

print_r($matches[1]);

Keywords

PHP preg_match_all input data structures regular expressions data parsing

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