note 81457 added to language.types.string

I encountered the odd situation of having a string containing unexpanded escape sequences that I wanted to expand, but also contained dollar signs that would be interpolated as variables. "$5.25\n", for example, where I want to convert \n to a newline, but don't want attempted interpolation of $5. Some muddling through docs and many obscenties later, I produced the following, which expands escape sequences in an existing string with NO interpolation. <?php // where we do all our magic function expand_escape($string) { return preg_replace_callback( '/\\\([nrtvf]|[0-7]{1,3}|[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,2})?/', create_function( '$matches', 'return ($matches[0] == "\\\\") ? "" : eval( sprintf(\'return "%s";\', $matches[0]) );' ), $string ); } // a string to test, and show the before and after $before = 'Quantity:\t500\nPrice:\t$5.25 each'; $after = expand_escape($before); var_dump($before, $after); /* Outputs: string(34) "Quantity:\t500\nPrice:\t$5.25 each" string(31) "Quantity: 500 Price: $5.25 each" */ ?> ---- Server IP: 69.147.83.197 Probable Submitter: 65.106.220.162 ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php Edit -- https://master.php.net/note/edit/81457 Del: integrated -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/81457/integrated Del: useless -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/81457/useless Del: bad code -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/81457/bad+code Del: spam -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/81457/spam Del: non-english -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/81457/non-english Del: in docs -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/81457/in+docs Del: other reasons-- https://master.php.net/note/delete/81457 Reject -- https://master.php.net/note/reject/81457 Search -- https://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php