Replace only A-Z/0-9 using ereg_replace();

[JShor]

I'm using a PHP version earlier than 5.3.0.

I have a series of stock numbers on a page, that I need to detect and replace. The pattern of each stock number are letters and numbers, containing a period somewhere in between, and possibly a dash.

The code I have works to detect the stock numbers, however they include the HTML tags if they are not separated by a space.

$text = "<strong>34D-23.48</strong>";
$text = ereg_replace("([a-zA-Z0-9]+.+[a-zA-Z0-9])",
                     "Stock # \\0", $text);

echo $text; 

However, the resulting HTML outputs as this:

<Stock #strong>34D-23.48</strong>

I can't separate the stock numbers, how do I get it so the output is like this?

<strong>Stock #34D-23.48</strong>

Thanks in advance for the help. :]
-Josh

[james438]

Honestly, I am quite rusty when it comes to ereg_replace(). I am having some trouble remembering the syntax for ereg, which does differ somewhat from PCRE. ereg_replace() is the more processor heavy version of preg_replace() and has since been deprecated. I was thinking that it had been removed completely in more recent versions of php, but I have not found any reference to back that up, so I am probably mistaken there.

I'm sure you could do the same thing with preg_replace

<?php
$text = "<strong>34D-23.48</strong>"; 
$text = preg_replace("/>\s?([\w.\-]{1,})\s?</", ">Stock # $1<", $text); 

echo $text; 
?>

\s? is for optional whitespace. \w is a word character, which is A-Za-z0-9 and the underscore. \- is for the dash, but since it is in a character class it needs to be escaped. the dot does not need to be escaped if it is within a character class. {1,} is a quantifier saying that there must be one or more of the character class.

If you really want it in ereg_replace format, let me know and I'll see what I can come up with.

The above script assumes that the stock number is between > and <.

[JShor]

Yes, preg_replace() accomplishes the same thing. Thanks a million James, the code worked. :]

[akitodito]

Yes preg_replace() is a much better option if only purely based on speed. It depends how much it's called but i had a loop processing a lot of data and i timed both ereg and preg.. preg was faster by quite a few seconds!

[JShor]

Alright, that issue is solved, but I have one more minor problem. I have numbers which display as a period at the beginning or end of a set of characters. I want to exclude these from being replaced.

For example, I will have .093 or 093., which are not supposed to be replaced. Can you modify the code so that it only replaces stock #'s with periods in the middle?

Also, the majority of the stock #'s have a </td> tag right after the number. When I tried modifying the code to include that in the replacement, it gives me an error.

This is the code;

$text = preg_replace("/>\s?([\w.\-]{1,})\s?</" + "</td>", ">Stock # $1<", $text); 

Help is greatly appreciated. :]

[JShor]

Alright, I managed to figure it out. Thanks guys.

[james438]

I am having a difficult time with this one. What was the solution?

[james438]

k, I got it.

<?php
$text = "<strong>34D-23.48</strong>"; 
$text=preg_replace('/>\s?([\w\-]{1,}\.?)(?=((?!<\/?strong\b|>|\.\s?<).)*<\/strong)/','>stock # $1',$text);
echo "$text";
?>

[JShor]

Still doesn't work. It will replace the stock number, but it also replaces ALL the strings which precede the </strong> tag. I'm stumped.

When I have this code:

$text = "<strong>DontReplaceThis</strong>"; 

I get this result:

stock # DontReplaceThis

It's not replacing JUST the string pattern with the decimal place.

Once again, help is greatly appreciated. Thank you. :]

[james438]

That is what it is supposed to do.

Could you give some examples of what you want replaced and what you do not want replaced? The only thing I can think of is that I have not yet restricted it to match the string that is between the <strong> tags that also contains a dot in the middle somewhere.

Basically it looks for all data between <strong> tags where the string is not preceded or appended with a dot. The string must begin with a letter or a number or underscore or dash and end with the same. periods can be in the middle of the string, but the period is optional.