What is the significance of using character classes in preg_match for special characters in PHP?

When dealing with special characters in regular expressions in PHP, it is important to use character classes to properly match these characters. Character classes allow you to specify a set of characters that you want to match, making it easier to handle special characters like parentheses, square brackets, and hyphens. 

$string = "Hello (World)";
$pattern = '/\(\w+\)/'; // matches parentheses and word characters inside them

if (preg_match($pattern, $string)) {
    echo "Match found!";
} else {
    echo "No match found.";
}

Keywords

character classes preg_match special characters PHP significance

Related Questions