preg_replace on everything prior to character

Question

I am trying to remove parts of a string which has an ID and : before it. So for example:

2846:ZE1,2847:ZE2,2848:ZE3,713:DY10,412:CF10

But I want it to look like this:

ZE1,ZE2,ZE3,DY10,CF10

I have tried the following preg_replace:

$remove = preg_replace('/[0-9]\:+/', '', $postcodes_id);

But this only removes the last digit and not all of it:

284ZE1,284ZE2,284ZE3,71DY10,41CF10

any help would be great?

Answer 1

Try this:

$remove = preg_replace('/[0-9]+\:/', '', $postcodes_id);

Adding the + means "one or more digit" instead of your code which is "just one".

I'm pretty sure you don't need the \ before the :...

Answer 2

A non regex solution

parse_str(str_replace(array(':',','),array('=','&'),$str1),$str1);

Demo

Answer 3

You have the + in the wrong place, it should be:

preg_replace('/[0-9]+:/', '', $postcodes_id);

You also don't need to escape :, it has no special meaning in regular expressions.