Re: preg_replace() help

On 7/13/07, Rick Pasotto <rick@niof.net> wrote:

I have quotes like the following: $txt = 'A promise is a debt. -- Irish Proverb'; I'd like to replace all the spaces afer the '--' with &nbsp; This is what I've tried:

        $pat = '/( --.*)(\s|\n)/U';
    $rpl = '$1$2 ';
    while (preg_match($pat,$txt,$matches) > 0) {
        print "$txt\n";
        printf("[0]: <%s>\n",$matches[0]);
        printf("[1]: <%s>\n",$matches[1]);
        printf("[2]: <%s>\n",$matches[2]);
        preg_replace($pat,$rpl,$txt);
    }

The prints are for debugging. $matches contains what I expect but nothing gets replaced and $txt stays the same so it loops forever. What am I doing wrong? -- "Everyone is as God has made him, and oftentimes a great deal worse."

                -- Miguel De Cervantes
    Rick Pasotto    rick@niof.net    http://www.niof.net

-- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php

If you mean that EVERY space after the -- separator should be replaced, then just try this: <? $txt = "As a rule, kids with meningitis don't smile when looking at attractive faces -- not even you, Miss America, or the ravishing pharmacist I mentioned above. -- ER Questions and Answers, Part 3"; function replace_space($txt) {

       $field = explode("--",$txt);
       for($i=0;$i<(count($field)-1);$i++) $new_txt .= $field[$i];
       $new_txt .= "--".str_replace(" ","&nbsp;",$field[(count($field)-1)]);
       return $new_txt;

} echo replace_space($txt)."\n"; ?> This would print:

       A promise is a debt. -- Irish Proverb

Conversely, it will still properly handle the existence of double-hyphens anywhere else in the quote, but not the source. Consider this string:

       "As a rule, kids with meningitis don't smile when looking at

attractive faces -- not even you, Miss America, or the ravishing pharmacist I mentioned above. -- ER Questions and Answers, Part 3" This would still become:

       "As a rule, kids with meningitis don't smile when looking at

attractive faces -- not even you, Miss America, or the ravishing pharmacist I mentioned above. --&nbsp;ER&nbsp;Questions&nbsp;and&nbsp;Answers,&nbsp;Part&nbsp;3" However, if you have double-hyphens in the source, like so:

       "What a pain in the butt this would be! -- Me, sending an

example -- to you The phrase would be printed like this:

       "What a pain in the butt this would be! -- Me, sending an

example --&nbsp;to&nbsp;you -- Daniel P. Brown [office] (570-) 587-7080 Ext. 272 [mobile] (570-) 766-8107