preg match count matches

Question

I have a preg match statement, and it checks for matches, but I was wondering how you can count the matches. Any advice appreciated.

$message='[tag] [tag]';
preg_match('/\[tag]\b/i',$message);

for example a count of this message string should lead to 2 matches

Answer 1

$message='[tag] [tag]';
echo preg_match_all('/\\[tag\\](?>\\s|$)/i', $message, $matches);

gives 2. Note you cannot use \b because the word boundary is before the ], not after.

See preg_match_all.

Answer 2

preg_match already returns the number of times the pattern matched.

However, this will only be 0 or 1 as it stops after the first match. You can use preg_match_all instead as it will check the entire string and return the total number of matches.