What are the potential pitfalls of using regular expressions to extract the IP address from the output of 'ipconfig' in PHP?

Potential pitfalls of using regular expressions to extract the IP address from the output of 'ipconfig' in PHP include: 1. IP address format variations: IP addresses can be in different formats (IPv4, IPv6) which can make it challenging to create a regex that covers all possibilities. 2. False positives: The regex may mistakenly match other strings that resemble an IP address, leading to incorrect results. 3. Maintenance: If the output format of 'ipconfig' changes, the regex may need to be updated accordingly. To solve this issue, a more robust approach would be to use PHP's built-in functions to parse the output of 'ipconfig' and extract the IP address. 

<?php
// Run the 'ipconfig' command and capture the output
exec('ipconfig', $output);

// Loop through the output to find the line containing the IP address
foreach ($output as $line) {
    if (strpos($line, 'IPv4 Address') !== false) {
        $ipAddress = trim(substr($line, strpos($line, ':') + 1));
        echo "IP Address: " . $ipAddress;
        break;
    }
}
?>

Keywords

regular expressions IP address ipconfig PHP extraction

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