Avoid backreference replacement in php's preg_replace - php

Consider the below use of preg_replace
$str='{{description}}';
$repValue='$0.0 $00.00 $000.000 $1.1 $11.11 $111.111';
$field = 'description';
$pattern = '/{{'.$field.'}}/';
$str =preg_replace($pattern, $repValue, $str );
echo $str;
// Expected output: $0.0 $00.00 $000.000 $1.1 $11.11 $111.11
// Actual output: {{description}}.0 {{description}}.00 {{description}}0.000 .1 .11 1.111
Here is a phpFiddle showing the issue
It's clear to me that the actual output is not as expected because preg_replace is viewing $0, $0, $0, $1, $11, and $11 as back references for matched groups replacing $0 with the full match and $1 and $11 with an empty string since there are no capture groups 1 or 11.
How can I prevent preg_replace from treating prices in my replacement value as back references and attempting to fill them?
Note that $repValue is dynamic and it's content will not be know before the operation.

Escape the dollar character before using a character translation (strtr):
$repValue = strtr('$0.0 $00.00 $000.000 $1.1 $11.11 $111.111', ['$'=>'\$']);
For more complicated cases (with dollars and escaped dollars) you can do this kind of substitution (totally waterproof this time):
$str = strtr($str, ['%'=>'%%', '$'=>'$%', '\\'=>'\\%']);
$repValue = strtr($repValue, ['%'=>'%%', '$'=>'$%', '\\'=>'\\%']);
$pattern = '/{{' . strtr($field, ['%'=>'%%', '$'=>'$%', '\\'=>'\\%']) . '}}/';
$str = preg_replace($pattern, $repValue, $str );
echo strtr($str, ['%%'=>'%', '$%'=>'$', '\\%'=>'\\']);
Note: if $field contains only a literal string (not a subpattern), you don't need to use preg_replace. You can use str_replace instead and in this case you don't have to substitute anything.

Related

php preg_replace not putting dash back in?

So, I'm doing some manipulation on lat/long pairs, and I need to turn this:
39.1889375383777,-94.48019109594397
into:
39.1889375383777 -94.48019109594397
I can't use str_replace, unless I want to have an array of 10 search and 10 replace strings, so I was hoping to use preg_replace:
$query1 = preg_replace( "/([0-9-]),([0-9-])/", "\1 \2", $query );
The problem is that the "-" gets lost:
39.1889375383777 94.48019109594397
Note, that I have a string containing a list of these, trying to do all at once:
[[39.1889375383777,-94.48019109594397],[39.18425796890108,-94.28288005131176],[39.41972019529712,-94.19956344733345],[39.41412315915102,-94.41932608390658],[39.34785744845041,-94.4893603307242],[39.1889375383777,-94.48019109594397]]
I managed to make this work with preg_replace_callback:
$str = preg_replace_callback( "/([0-9-]),([0-9-])/",
function ($matches) {return $matches[1] . " " . $matches[2];},
$query
);
But still not sure why the simpler preg_match didn't work?
Your main issue is that "\1 \2" define a "\x1\x20\x2" string, where the first character is a SOH char and the third one is STX char (see the ASCII table). To define backreferences, you need to use a literal backslash, "\\", or, better, use $n notation, and better inside a single-quoted string literal.
You can also use a solution without backreferences:
preg_replace('~(?<=\d),(?=-?\d)~', ' ', $str)
Details:
(?<=\d) - a location that is immediately preceded with a digit
, - a comma
(?=-?\d) - a location that is immediately followed with an optional - and a digit.
See the PHP demo:
$str = '[[39.1889375383777,-94.48019109594397],[39.18425796890108,-94.28288005131176],[39.41972019529712,-94.19956344733345],[39.41412315915102,-94.41932608390658],[39.34785744845041,-94.4893603307242],[39.1889375383777,-94.48019109594397]]';
echo preg_replace('~(?<=\d),(?=-?\d)~', ' ', $str);
// => [[39.1889375383777 -94.48019109594397],[39.18425796890108 -94.28288005131176],[39.41972019529712 -94.19956344733345],[39.41412315915102 -94.41932608390658],[39.34785744845041 -94.4893603307242],[39.1889375383777 -94.48019109594397]]

Regex rules in an array

Maybe it can not be solved this issue as I want, but maybe you can help me guys.
I have a lot of malformed words in the name of my products.
Some of them has leading ( and trailing ) or maybe one of these, it is same for / and " signs.
What I do is that I am explode the name of the product by spaces, and examines these words.
So I want to replace them to nothing. But, a hard drive could be 40GB ATA 3.5" hard drive. I need to process all the word, but I can not use the same method for 3.5" as for () or // because this 3.5" is valid.
So I only need to replace the quotes, when it is at the start of the string AND at end of the string.
$cases = [
'(testone)',
'(testtwo',
'testthree)',
'/otherone/',
'/othertwo',
'otherthree/',
'"anotherone',
'anothertwo"',
'"anotherthree"',
];
$patterns = [
'/^\(/',
'/\)$/',
'~^/~',
'~/$~',
//Here is what I can not imagine, how to add the rule for `"`
];
$result = preg_replace($patterns, '', $cases);
This is works well, but can it be done in one regex_replace()? If yes, somebody can help me out the pattern(s) for the quotes?
Result for quotes should be this:
'"anotherone', //no quote at end leave the leading
'anothertwo"', //no quote at start leave the trailin
'anotherthree', //there are quotes on start and end so remove them.
You may use another approach: rather than define an array of patterns, use one single alternation based regex:
preg_replace('~^[(/]|[/)]$|^"(.*)"$~s', '$1', $s)
See the regex demo
Details:
^[(/] - a literal ( or / at the start of the string
| - or
[/)]$ - a literal ) or / at the end of the string
| - or
^"(.*)"$ - a " at the start of the string, then any 0+ characters (due to /s option, the . matches a linebreak sequence, too) that are captured into Group 1, and " at the end of the string.
The replacement pattern is $1 that is empty when the first 2 alternatives are matched, and contains Group 1 value if the 3rd alternative is matched.
Note: In case you need to replace until no match is found, use a preg_match with preg_replace together (see demo):
$s = '"/some text/"';
$re = '~^[(/]|[/)]$|^"(.*)"$~s';
$tmp = '';
while (preg_match($re, $s) && $tmp != $s) {
$tmp = $s;
$s = preg_replace($re, '$1', $s);
}
echo $s;
This works
preg_replace([[/(]?(.+)[/)]?|/\"(.+)\"/], '$1', $string)

Add + before word, see all between quotes as one word

I have a question. I need to add a + before every word and see all between quotes as one word.
A have this code
preg_replace("/\w+/", '+\0', $string);
which results in this
+test +demo "+bla +bla2"
But I need
+test +demo +"bla bla2"
Can someone help me :)
And is it possible to not add a + if there is already one? So you don't get ++test
Thanks!
Maybe you can use this regex:
$string = '+test demo between "double quotes" and between \'single quotes\' test';
$result = preg_replace('/\b(?<!\+)\w+|["|\'].+?["|\']/', '+$0', $string);
var_dump($result);
// which will result in:
string '+test +demo +between +"double quotes" +and +between +'single quotes' +test' (length=74)
I've used a 'negative lookbehind' to check for the '+'.
Regex lookahead, lookbehind and atomic groups
I can't test this but could you try it and let me know how it goes?
First the regex: choose from either, a series of letters which may or may not be preceded by a '+', or, a quotation, followed by any number of letters or spaces, which may be preceded by a '+' followed by a quotation.
I would hope this matches all your examples.
We then get all the matches of the regex in your string, store them in the variable "$matches" which is an array. We then loop through this array testing if there is a '+' as the first character. If there is, do nothing, otherwise add one.
We then implode the array into a string, separating the elements by a space.
Note: I believe $matches in created when given as a parameter to preg_match.
$regex = '/[((\+)?[a-zA-z]+)(\"(\+)?[a-zA-Z ]+\")]/';
preg_match($regex, $string, $matches);
foreach($matches as $match)
{
if(substr($match, 0, 1) != "+") $match = "+" + $match;
}
$result = implode($matches, " ");

PHP Regex: Remove words less than 3 characters

I'm trying to remove all words of less than 3 characters from a string, specifically with RegEx.
The following doesn't work because it is looking for double spaces. I suppose I could convert all spaces to double spaces beforehand and then convert them back after, but that doesn't seem very efficient. Any ideas?
$text='an of and then some an ee halved or or whenever';
$text=preg_replace('# [a-z]{1,2} #',' ',' '.$text.' ');
echo trim($text);
Removing the Short Words
You can use this:
$replaced = preg_replace('~\b[a-z]{1,2}\b\~', '', $yourstring);
In the demo, see the substitutions at the bottom.
Explanation
\b is a word boundary that matches a position where one side is a letter, and the other side is not a letter (for instance a space character, or the beginning of the string)
[a-z]{1,2} matches one or two letters
\b another word boundary
Replace with the empty string.
Option 2: Also Remove Trailing Spaces
If you also want to remove the spaces after the words, we can add \s* at the end of the regex:
$replaced = preg_replace('~\b[a-z]{1,2}\b\s*~', '', $yourstring);
Reference
Word Boundaries
You can use the word boundary tag: \b:
Replace: \b[a-z]{1,2}\b with ''
Use this
preg_replace('/(\b.{1,2}\s)/','',$your_string);
As some solutions worked here, they had a problem with my language's "multichar characters", such as "ch". A simple explode and implode worked for me.
$maxWordLength = 3;
$string = "my super string";
$exploded = explode(" ", $string);
foreach($exploded as $key => $word) {
if(mb_strlen($word) < $maxWordLength) unset($exploded[$key]);
}
$string = implode(" ", $exploded);
echo $string;
// outputs "super string"
To me, it seems that this hack works fine with most PHP versions:
$string2 = preg_replace("/~\b[a-zA-Z0-9]{1,2}\b\~/i", "", trim($string1));
Where [a-zA-Z0-9] are the accepted Char/Number range.

PHP regular expression find and append to string

I'm trying to use regular expressions (preg_match and preg_replace) to do the following:
Find a string like this:
{%title=append me to the title%}
Then extract out the title part and the append me to the title part. Which I can then use to perform a str_replace(), etc.
Given that I'm terrible at regular expressions, my code is failing...
preg_match('/\{\%title\=(\w+.)\%\}/', $string, $matches);
What pattern do I need? :/
I think it's because the \w operator doesn't match spaces. Because everything after the equal sign is required to fit in before your closing %, it all has to match whatever is inside those brackets (or else the entire expression fails to match).
This bit of code worked for me:
$str = '{%title=append me to the title%}';
preg_match('/{%title=([\w ]+)%}/', $str, $matches);
print_r($matches);
//gives:
//Array ([0] => {%title=append me to the title%} [1] => append me to the title )
Note that the use of the + (one or more) means that an empty expression, ie. {%title=%} won't match. Depending on what you expect for white space, you might want to use the \s after the \w character class instead of an actual space character. \s will match tabs, newlines, etc.
You can try:
$str = '{%title=append me to the title%}';
// capture the thing between % and = as title
// and between = and % as the other part.
if(preg_match('#{%(\w+)\s*=\s*(.*?)%}#',$str,$matches)) {
$title = $matches[1]; // extract the title.
$append = $matches[2]; // extract the appending part.
}
// find these.
$find = array("/$append/","/$title/");
// replace the found things with these.
$replace = array('IS GOOD','TITLE');
// use preg_replace for replacement.
$str = preg_replace($find,$replace,$str);
var_dump($str);
Output:
string(17) "{%TITLE=IS GOOD%}"
Note:
In your regex: /\{\%title\=(\w+.)\%\}/
There is no need to escape % as its
not a meta char.
There is no need to escape { and }.
These are meta char but only when
used as a quantifier in the form of
{min,max} or {,max} or {min,}
or {num}. So in your case they are treated literally.
Try this:
preg_match('/(title)\=(.*?)([%}])/s', $string, $matches);
The match[1] has your title and match[2] has the other part.

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