nslookup/host parsing PHP

Question

I'm trying to resolve a hostname in PHP and can't use the builtin gethostbyname function because it doesn't support a timeout option, therefore i'm trying to deal with that problem by looking up the hostname with nslookup or host. The Problem is that these Functions/Programs don't return the plain result but something like

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:   google.de
Address: 173.194.35.159
Name:   google.de
Address: 173.194.35.151
Name:   google.de
Address: 173.194.35.152

Does anybody know a fast function in PHP to parse that so it just returns the first IP Adress? Thanks.

Answer 1

This regular expression could be improved but it will do the trick.

If your output is in $lines then you can use

preg_match('/Address: ([0-9\.]*).*/', $lines, $matches);

Then the first match will be stored in

$matches[1]