I have a URL that is in the following structure: http://somewebsite.com/directory1/directory2/directory3...
I'm trying to get the last directory name from this url, but the depth of the url isn't always constant so i don't think i can use a simple substr or preg_match call - is there a function to get the last instance of a regular expression match from a string?
Just use:
basename( $url )
It should have the desired effect
Torben's answer is the correct way to handle this specific case. But for posterity, here is how you get the last instance of a regular expression match:
preg_match_all('/pattern/', 'subject', $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER);
$last_match = end($matches); // or array_pop(), but it modifies the array
$last_match[0] contains the complete match, $last_match[1] contains the first parenthesized subpattern, etc.
Another point of interest: your regular expression '/\/([^/])$/' should work as-is because the $ anchors it to the end.