note 39667 added to function.preg-split

I needed to encode special html characters in strings, but keep some of the tags working! This function does the deed: <?php function html_out_keep_tags ($string) { $newstring = ''; $pattern = '/(<\/?(?:a .*|h1|h2|b|i)>)/ims'; $newarray = preg_split( $pattern, $string, -1, PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE | PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY ); foreach ($newarray as $element) { if (!preg_match($pattern, $element)) $element = htmlspecialchars ( html_entity_decode($element, ENT_QUOTES), ENT_QUOTES); $newstring .= $element; } return $newstring; } ?> edit $pattern to change the allowed tags. Note that ?: usefully prevents the sub-pattern from becoming a delimiter. Double encoding is prevented, see notes on htmlspecialchars(). ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.preg-split.php Edit -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=edit+39667 Delete -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+39667&report=yes Reject -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=reject+39667&report=yes Search -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php