filter values from an array similar to SQL LIKE '%search%' using PHP

Question

I created an autocomplete field using JQueryUI and I've stored my data in a flat doc. I can read the values into an array... but I would like to be able to return the alphabetic matches based on the user input. So if the array contains [orange,blue,green,red,pink,brown,black] and the user types bl then I only return [blue,black].

Looking at array_diff() but without complete matches on the entire value of the array, I'm not sure how to use it... maybe a regular expression thrown in? My two weakest skills array manipulation and regex Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

You don't need to use array_filter and a custom / lambda function, preg_grep does the trick:

$input = preg_quote('bl', '~'); // don't forget to quote input string!
$data = array('orange', 'blue', 'green', 'red', 'pink', 'brown', 'black');

$result = preg_grep('~' . $input . '~', $data);