Re: Parsing brackets in text

On 13/11/06, Roman Neuhauser <neuhauser@sigpipe.cz> wrote:

# dotancohen@gmail.com / 2006-11-13 01:35:44 +0200: On 13/11/06, Chris <dmagick@gmail.com> wrote:

<?php function makeLink($matches) {

       $returnString="<b>" . $matches[1] . "</b>";
       return $returnString;

} $articleText="This is a very [long] string."; $articleText=preg_replace_callback('/\[([a-z]+)\]/i' , "makeLink", $articleText); print $articleText . "\n"; ?> The callback takes whatever the regular expressions returns (alpha characters between [ and ]) and runs it through function "makeLink". Not sure how that will go with multiple []'s etc in the same string but it should get you started.

I didn't know that I had to call the function like that- I don't remember ever seeing it called that way.

    It's done this way in all the examples on
    http://cz.php.net/manual/en/function.preg-replace-callback.php
    What documentation did you read?

In the first example on that page, it looks to me like it should just return the text "next_year", and not call that function. Obviously, it is my misunderstanding of the way that the funciton works, and not in the function itself. I do learn php from TFM and this list, not from a course. Just like in any learning environment, I could misinterpret what is taught to me and need to ask a question, or not even know that I misinterpreted and not know that I need to ask a question. This is a case of the latter, clearly, because I have never needed to do anything other than a simple str_replace until now.

Also, I must google the meaning of the (~+) in the regex.

    No need to google:

    http://cz.php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.syntax.php

    Skip the Differences From Perl section.

That I have read at least three or four times. I still don't capture all of it, but I try. You are correct, I should have referenced that right away. It won't hurt for me to read it again, too. Thank you. Dotan Cohen