Menu
Community /Pin to ProfileBookmark
@NogDogNov 30.2010 — #Make use of preg_quote().
@NogDogNov 30.2010 — #The problem is that in PCRE regular expressions, many characters have special meanings. To have them be treated as literal characters instead, you escape them with a back-slash, much like you do certain characters in SQL statements or even internal quotes within PHP echo() statements. The preg_quote() function will automatically escape such characters much like mysql_real_escape_string() will for MySQL string literals. Also, the regexp must begin and end with a delimiter: many different characters can be used, but "/" is the default -- if you want to use something else, then you need to let preg_quote() know what it is via its second parameter.
Help with delimiters
Hello,
I am using php to take input text from an html form and output it in an xml file. I am using preg_replace to replace certain portions of content. I am having trouble though with the delimiters.
This is what I want to do
Input : “I ate lunch”
Output: “LUNCH”
As i have it set up now, the delimiters work fine if i use ‘/Today I ate lunch/’, and the replacement string as ‘lunch’
The problem i have is that I don’t understand how to use delimeters when dealing with non-alphanumeric variables. One of the lines ii need to condense into a concise version goes something like this:
Input: “I ate lunch at 5-6 (different) places w/billy this wk”
For this I’m unsure how I need to use delimiters because the forward slash is actually in the phrase. I have tried this but it doesn’t seem to work. Do i need to use a new non-alphanumeric symbol for each character?
Input: “[I ate lunch at 5*–*(*)*/
I hope someone can help me understand this. It would help me a lot.
Best,
-A
Sign in
to post a comment5 Comments(s) ↴
0
@NogDogNov 30.2010 — #Make use of preg_quote().[code=php]
$search = "text with / and (stuff) like *this*";
$result = preg_replace('/' . preg_quote($search) . '/i', 'replacement', $string);
[/code]0
@NogDogNov 30.2010 — #The problem is that in PCRE regular expressions, many characters have special meanings. To have them be treated as literal characters instead, you escape them with a back-slash, much like you do certain characters in SQL statements or even internal quotes within PHP echo() statements. The preg_quote() function will automatically escape such characters much like mysql_real_escape_string() will for MySQL string literals. Also, the regexp must begin and end with a delimiter: many different characters can be used, but "/" is the default -- if you want to use something else, then you need to let preg_quote() know what it is via its second parameter.[code=php]
$search = array();
$search[0] = "/" . preg_quote("I ate lunch at 5-6 (different) places w/billy this wk") . "/";
// use a different delimiter, and make the regexp case-insensitive:
$search[1] = "#" . preg_quote("I ate breakfast at 2-3 (different) places w/jim this wk", "#") . "/i";
[/code]