How can regular expressions be used to check if a string starts with "in_" and ends with "_out" in PHP?

Regular expressions can be used in PHP to check if a string starts with "in_" and ends with "_out" by using the preg_match function. The regular expression pattern "^in_.*_out$" can be used to match strings that start with "in_" followed by any characters and ending with "_out". By using this pattern with preg_match, we can determine if a given string meets the specified criteria.

$string = "in_example_out";
if (preg_match("/^in_.*_out$/", $string)) {
    echo "String starts with 'in_' and ends with '_out'";
} else {
    echo "String does not meet the criteria";
}