PREC Modifers

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12-17-2010, 08:27 PM
bluewalrus

PREC Modifers

So I've been using the modifers (http://php.net/manual/en/reference.p....modifiers.php) I thought correctly but have run into a few problems recently.

I had this

Code:

$code_is = preg_replace('/<li><p.*?>(.*?)<\/p>.*?<\/li>/s', "<li>$1</li>", $code_is);

I then tried

Code:

$code_is = preg_replace('/<li><p.*?>(.*?)<\/p>.*?<\/li>/m', "<li>$1</li>", $code_is);

and

Code:

$code_is = preg_replace('/<li><p.*?>(.*?)<\/p>.*?<\/li>/sm', "<li>$1</li>", $code_is);

None of which worked as I intended. I'm trying to replace any line item with a paragraph in it there are new lines and tabs in there. None of the above solutions work, the below solution somewhat works but not for all occurances so I figure there must be a better way or modifer.

Code:

$code_is = preg_replace('/<li>[.|\n|\r|\t]*?<p.*?>(.*?)<\/p>[.|\n|\r|\t]*?<\/li>/s', "<li>$1</li>", $code_is);
12-17-2010, 09:36 PM
james438

sometimes newlines are expressed as \r\n as well. When you say that it is not working I am assuming that you mean it is not matching. I have not worked with the multiline modifier much, but it applies to the use of ^ and $ commands, which you are not using, so I wouldn't worry about it with your situation.

/s tells the dot to recognize newlines, so I would keep using it in your situation. Using the dot in [.|\n|\r|\t] makes the \n|\r|\t parts meaningless since the dot will match anything for one character. You may as well replace [.|\n|\r|\t] with ".".

Not promising anything, but could you post an example of what you want matched and what it should look like after it has been processed?

Just a typo, but your title says PREC when it should be PCRE ;)

later
12-17-2010, 09:47 PM
bluewalrus

Yes, it's not matching I think because of the new lines/tabs I'd like it to just completely ignore any white spaces (tabs, returns, enters, spaces, [ ,  (if possible) ]).

Code:

<li> blah blah blah random text </li>

Replaced as

Code:

<li>blah blah blah random text</li>
12-17-2010, 09:50 PM
djr33

You could pre-process the text by removing all of those with a simple str_replace(). Then you wouldn't need to worry about it. I'm not sure if that would apply to your project though.
12-17-2010, 10:02 PM
bluewalrus

How would I do it with str_replace? That examples is 3 lines of a larger string. I'd want to keep tabs, new lines, etc. if they aren't inside an li.

I guess a better sample would be:

Code:

Some stuff up here <ol> <li>1</li> <li>2</li> <li> blah blah blah random text </li> </ol> <img src="a.jpg" alt="a" /> <a href="link.html">link text</a>

The formatting of this would be

Code:

Some stuff up here <ol> <li>1</li> <li>2</li> <li>blah blah blah random text</li> </ol> <img src="a.jpg" alt="a" /> <a href="link.html">link text</a>
12-17-2010, 10:07 PM
djr33

Won't work well then. My idea was more for a full HTML (or XML) parser: first strip all white space (since it is irrelevant) then process the tags. But if you are going to need the formatted source code, there's no way around that.
12-18-2010, 12:05 AM
james438

Why not just use this?

PHP Code:

<?php $code_is=" Some stuff up here <ol> <li>1</li> <li>2</li> <li> blah blah blah random text </li> </ol> <img src=\"a.jpg\" alt=\"a\" /> <a href=\"link.html\">link text</a>"; $code_is=preg_replace('/<li>\s{1,}(|\b)/s','<li>',$code_is); $code_is=preg_replace('/(\s)+(<\/p>)?<\/li>/s',"</li>",$code_is); ?> <textarea cols="100" rows="50"><?php print htmlentities($code_is);?></textarea>

"+" means one or more, which is the same as "{1,}".
"?" means zero or one, which is another way of saying that it may be present at this location and it might not.
12-18-2010, 12:15 AM
james438

Actually, this is better:

Code:

$code_is=preg_replace('/<li>\s+(|\b)/s','<li>',$code_is); $code_is=preg_replace('/\s*?<\/p>?<\/li>/s',"</li>",$code_is);

EDIT: even better:

Code:

$code_is=preg_replace('/<li>\s+(|\b)/s','<li>',$code_is); $code_is=preg_replace('/\s*?<\/p>?\s*?<\/li>/s','</li>',$code_is);
12-18-2010, 06:11 AM
james438

If this answers your question, please mark this thread as resolved.
12-20-2010, 12:42 AM
bluewalrus

Been busy haven't had a chance to try it quite yet. What does the \b do?
12-20-2010, 01:33 AM
james438

good question. \b is a bit harder to understand; at least for me it was. \b is the boundary between a word character and a non word character. For example

$test='####tttt';
$test=preg_replace('/\b/','correct',$test);
echo "$test";

// this produces: ####correcttttt

I wasn't sure how to do what you wanted without \b, because it would have failed under certain circumstances.
12-28-2010, 08:32 PM
bluewalrus

Thanks, yes that could did work I finally got around to finishing my word/open office/ckeditor convertor.

I don't have a mark as resolved option anymore though I guess maybe an admin will mark it for me.
12-29-2010, 07:18 PM
bluewalrus

I've returned with a varied question (this one is to remove duplicating tags). I've got this code now

PHP Code:

$code_is = preg_replace('/<([a-z,A-Z].*?)>\s+<\1>/s', " <$1>", $code_is); //initially had $code_is = preg_replace('/<(.*?)>\s+<\1>/s', " <$1>", $code_is); $code_is = preg_replace('/<(\/.*?)><\1>/s', "<$1> ", $code_is);

which is suppose to filter something like

Quote:

 et al.

to

Quote:

et al.

Well it works there it is deleting <td> tags entered like this

Quote:

<td> </td>
<td> </td>

which becomes

Quote:

<td> </td>
12-29-2010, 10:16 PM
james438

We should probably try and get a moderator to split this thread.

Anyway

PHP Code:

<?php $code_is=" et al. <td> </td> <td> </td>"; $code_is = preg_replace('/<([a-zA-Z].*?)>\s*<\1>/s', " <$1>", $code_is); $code_is = preg_replace('/<(\/.*?)><\1>/s', "<$1> ", $code_is); echo $code_is; ?>

I didn't look too closely into why it wasn't working. All I did was fix a few of the more obvious errors and then tried it out again and it seems to be working.

EDIT: This is a little better though:

Code:

$code_is = preg_replace('/<([a-zA-Z].*?)>\s*<\1>/si', " <$1>", $code_is); $code_is = preg_replace('/<(\/.*?)><\1>/si', "<$1> ", $code_is);