How can regular expressions be utilized in PHP to provide more flexibility in extracting text sections based on search criteria?

Regular expressions in PHP can be used to search for specific patterns within a string, allowing for more flexibility in extracting text sections based on certain criteria. By using regex functions like preg_match() or preg_match_all(), you can define patterns to match against and extract the desired text sections accordingly.

$string = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.";
$pattern = '/ipsum (.*) consectetur/i';

if (preg_match($pattern, $string, $matches)) {
    echo "Found: " . $matches[1];
} else {
    echo "Pattern not found.";
}