How to use a PHP wildcard?

Question

I have a function that deletes a set of cookies on customer logout, my problem is that every time a cookie is deleted on logout - when the customer returns to the website and logs back in it is generated again, and when it's generated again a number is appended to the end.

Cookie Name's are generated as follows,

affiliate_account_code_1
affiliate_account_code_2
affiliate_account_code_3

and can go all the way up to the 100's.

My question is is there a way in PHP to say, if the string matches this criteria affiliate_account_code_* like using a wild card in the terminal? Is there a way to try and catch any number that is appended to the string.

After searching

PHP wildcard

I found that there is a fnmatch() function, having never used it I am unsure if it's suitable for the above.

Answer 1

This is easily possible with a regular expression and preg_match:

preg_match('/affiliate_account_code_(\d+)/', $string, $matches);

\d+ matches an infinite (at least one) number of digits. The match between the parentheses can be retrieved using $matches[1].

Demo:

php> $string = 'affiliate_account_code_1';
'affiliate_account_code_1'
php> preg_match('/affiliate_account_code_(\d+)/', $string, $matches);
int(1)
php> $matches;
array (
  0 => 'affiliate_account_code_1',
  1 => '1',
)