Regex spits out extra empty array

Question

$input = "some words go here priority: p1,p2 -rank:3 status: not delayed";

$pattern = "/(\S+):\s*(.*?)(?=\S+:|$)|(.*?)(?=\S+:|$)/";

preg_match_all($pattern, $input, $matches);

Example: http://regex101.com/r/yM0wO1#pcre

The above pattern ends up outputting an extra empty array at the end. (See Match 5 in the example)
Everything else is the way I expect it to be...

How can I prevent the extra empty array?

EDIT: BACKGROUND INFO

I have data formatted as such:

some words go here priority: p1,p2 -rank:3 status: not delayed

Basically I need to retrieve each set of data that corresponds to the colon name.

Ideally if I could end up with an array structure such that

'' => 'some words go here'
priority => 'p1,p2'
-rank    => 3
status   => 'not delayed'

A few caveats:

keywords will not have a defining colon-word (keywords are just placed in the front)

keywords will not always exist (might just be colon-words)

colon-words will not always exist (might just be keywords)

Anirudha · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-07 03:14:27Z

1

A better way would be to split instead of matching it.

(?=\s\S+:)

Each string would contain the key-value pair or only value if there's no key

edited May 7, 2014 at 3:14

answered May 7, 2014 at 3:00

Anirudha

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2 Comments

kylex Over a year ago

Well, not quite... I've added some background info to hopefully make clearer what I need.

Anirudha Over a year ago

@kylex split it instead of matching it with above regex.

ɹɐqʞɐ zoɹǝɟ · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-07 02:57:56Z

0

try this

(\S+):\s*(.*?)(?=\S+:|$)|(.*?)(?=\S+:)

answered May 7, 2014 at 2:57

ɹɐqʞɐ zoɹǝɟ

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1 Comment

kylex Over a year ago

Added some needed background info which explains the caveats

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