php - How to return only named groups with preg_match or preg_match_all?

Question

Example:

$string = "This is some text written on 2010-07-18.";
preg_match('|(?<date>dddd-dd-dd)|i', $string, $arr_result);
print_r($arr_result);

Returns:

Array
(
    [0] => 2010-07-18
    [date] => 2010-07-18
    [1] => 2010-07-18
)

But I want it to be:

Array
(
    [date] => 2010-07-18
)

In PHP's PDO object there is an option that is filtering results from database by removing these duplicate numbered values : PDO::FETCH_ASSOC. But I haven't seen similar modifier for the PCRE functions in PHP yet.

Answer 1

I do not think you can make preg_* do it, but you can do it with a simple loop. But I don't see why those elements pose a problem.