don't match string in brackets php regex - php

Question

I've been trying to use preg_replace() in php to replace string. I want to match and replace all 's' in this string, but I just came with solution only mathching 's' between 'b' and 'c' or 's' between > <. Is there any way I can use negative look behind not just for the character '>' but for whole string ? I don't want to replace anything in brackets.
<text size:3>s<text size:3>absc
<text size:3>xxetxx<text size:3>sometehing
edit:
just get 's' in >s< and in bsc. Then when I will change string for example from 's' to 'te', to replace 'te' in xtex and sometehing. So I was looking for regular expression to avoid replacing anything in <....>

Answer 1

You can use this pattern:
$pattern = '/((<[^>]*>)*)([^s]*)s/';
$replace = '\1\3■'; # ■ = your replacement string
$result = preg_replace( $pattern, $replace, $str );
regex101 demo
Pattern explanation:
( # group 1:
(<[^>]*>)* # group 2: zero-or-more <...>
)
([^s]*) # group 3: zero-or-more not “s”
s # litterally “s”
If you want match case-insensitive, add a “i” at the end of pattern:
$pattern = '/((<[^>]*>)*)([^s]*)s/i';
Edit: Replacement explanation
In the search pattern we have 3 groups surrounded by round brackets. In the replace string we can refer to groups by syntax \1, where 1 is the group number.
So, replace string in the example means: replace group 1 with itself, replace group 3 with itself, replace “s” with desired replacement. We don't need to use group 2 because it is included in group 1 (this due to regex impossibility to retrieve repeating groups).
In the demo string:
abs<text size:3>ssss<text size:3><img src="img"><text size:3>absc
└┘╵└───────────┘╵╵╵╵└───────────────────────────────────────┘└┘╵╵
└─┘└────────────┘╵╵╵└──────────────────────────────────────────┘
1 2 345 6
Pattern matches:
group 1 group 3 s
--------- --------- ---------
1 > 0 1 1
2 > 1 0 1
3 > 0 0 1
4 > 0 0 1
5 > 0 0 1
6 > 3 1 1
The last “c” is not matches, so is not replaced.

Answer 2

Use preg_match_all to get all the s letters and use it with flag PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE to get the indices.
The regular expression $pat contains a negative lookahead and lookbehind so that the s inside the brackets expression is not matched.
In this example I replace s with the string 5. Change to the string you want to substitute:
<?php
$s = " <text size:3>s<text size:3>absc";
$pat = "/(?<!\<text )s(?!ize:3\>)/";
preg_match_all($pat, $s, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
foreach ($matches[0] as $match) {
$s[$match[1]] = "5";
}
print_r(htmlspecialchars($s));