PHP regex split text to insert HTML - php

Question

Very(!) new to regex but...
I have the following text strings outputted from a $title variable:
A. This is a title
B. This is another title
etc...
I'm after the following:
<span>A.</span> This is a title
<span>B.</span> This is another title
etc...
Currently I have the following code:
$title = $element['#title'];
if (preg_match("([A-Z][\.])", $title)) {
return '<li' . drupal_attributes($element['#attributes']) . ">Blarg</li>\n";
} else {
return '<li' . drupal_attributes($element['#attributes']) . '>' . $output . $sub_menu . "</li>\n";
}
This replaces anything A. through to Z. with Blarg however I'm not sure how to progress this?
In the Text Wrangler app I could wrap regex in brackets and output each argument like so:
argument 1 = \1
argument 2 = \2
etc...
I know I need to add an additional regex to grab the remainder of the text string.
Perhaps a regex guru could help and novice out!
Thanks,
Steve

Answer 1

Try
$title = 'A. This is a title';
$title = preg_replace('/^[A-Z]\./', '<span>$0</span>', $title);
echo $title;
// <span>A.</span> This is a title
If the string contains newlines and other titles following them, add the m modifier after the ending delimiter.
If the regex doesn't match then no replacements will be made, so there is no need for the if statement.

Answer 2

Is it always just 2 char ("A.", "B.", "C.",...)
because then you could work with a substring instead of regex.
Just pick of the first 2 chars of the link and wrap the span around the substring

Answer 3

Try this (untested):
$title = $element['#title'];
if (preg_match("/([A-Z]\.)(.*)/", $title, $matches)) {
return '<li' . drupal_attributes($element['#attributes']) . "><span>{$matches[0]</span>{$matches[1]}</li>\n";
} else {
return '<li' . drupal_attributes($element['#attributes']) . '>' . $output . $sub_menu . "</li>\n";
}
The change here was to first add / to the start and end of the string (to denote it's a regex), then remove the [ and ] around the period . because that's just a literal character on its own, then to add another grouping which will match the rest of the string. I also Added a $matches to preg_match() to place these two matches in to to use later, which we do on the next life.
Note: You could also do this instead:
$title = preg_replace('/^([A-Z]\.)/', "<span>$1</span>", $title);
This will simply replace the A-Z followed by the period at the start of the string (denoted with the ^ character) with <span>, that character (grabbed with the brackets) and </span>.
Again, that's not tested, but should give you a headstart :)