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How can regular expressions be used in PHP to transform non-standard date formats into ISO conforming strings for easier processing?

Non-standard date formats can be transformed into ISO conforming strings using regular expressions in PHP by capturing the different parts of the date (day, month, year) and rearranging them in the ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD). This can be achieved by using PHP's preg_replace() function to match and replace the date components accordingly.

php 
// Non-standard date format
$nonStandardDate = '31/12/2022';

// Regular expression to capture day, month, and year
$pattern = '/(\d{2})\/(\d{2})\/(\d{4})/';

// Replace non-standard date format with ISO conforming string
$isoDate = preg_replace($pattern, '$3-$2-$1', $nonStandardDate);

echo $isoDate; // Output: 2022-12-31

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