What are alternative approaches to using regex in PHP for extracting data from strings, especially in complex scenarios?

When dealing with complex scenarios that require extracting data from strings in PHP, using regex can sometimes be cumbersome and hard to maintain. An alternative approach is to use PHP's built-in string functions like `strpos`, `substr`, `explode`, or `str_replace` to manipulate and extract data from strings. These functions can be more straightforward and easier to understand in certain cases compared to regex. 

// Example of using strpos and substr to extract data from a string
$string = "Name: John Doe, Age: 30, Occupation: Developer";
$pos = strpos($string, "Name: ");
$name = substr($string, $pos + 6, strpos($string, ",") - $pos - 6);
echo $name; // Output: John Doe

Keywords

preg_match preg_match_all strpos substr explode

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