regex - Php Regular Expression repeated characters

Question

I have a string in php like this.

$str = "ABCCCDE" //Contains repeated character CCC more than 2 times

I want to know if there is any repeated characters more than 2 times using regular expression.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

if (preg_match('/(.)\1{2}/', $str))
   echo "Has 3 same characters consecutively!";

The (.) will match any character (except new lines), and the 1 will match a pattern same as the first matched group — in this case, the character we've just matched. So this RegEx will match 3 same consecutive characters.