In PHP, how can I count the number of times "test" appears in a string, but excluded cases where it is followed by "123" or "abc"?

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You can use regular expressions to achieve this. Here's an example:

$string = "This is a test string. It contains multiple test cases, but some are excluded like test123 or testabc.";

$count = preg_match_all("/\btest\b(?!(123|abc))/i", $string, $matches);

echo "The word 'test' appears $count times in the string.";

// Output: The word 'test' appears 2 times in the string.

Explanation:

• preg_match_all() function is used to match all occurrences of a pattern in a string.
• /.../i is a regular expression pattern delimiters. The i flag makes the pattern case-insensitive.
• \b is a word boundary anchor that matches the transition between a word character (as defined by \w) and a non-word character (as defined by \W).
• test matches the word "test" exactly.
• (?!(123|abc)) is a negative lookahead assertion that matches any position that is not immediately followed by "123" or "abc".
• The preg_match_all() function returns the number of matches found in the string, which is stored in $count.