PREC Modifers

[bluewalrus]

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

I then tried

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

and

$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_is = preg_replace('/<li>[.|\n|\r|\t]*?<p.*?>(.*?)<\/p>[.|\n|\r|\t]*?<\/li>/s', "<li>$1</li>", $code_is);

[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

[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) ]).

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

Replaced as

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

[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.

[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:

	<p>Some stuff up here</p>

		<ol>
			<li>1</li>
			<li>2</li>
			<li>
					<p>blah blah blah random text
			</p></li>
		</ol>

<img src="a.jpg" alt="a" />

	<a href="link.html">link text</a>

The formatting of this would be

	<p>Some stuff up here</p>

		<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>

[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.

[james438]

Why not just use this?

<?php
$code_is="    <p>Some stuff up here</p>

        <ol>
            <li>1</li>
            <li>2</li>
            <li>
                    <p>blah blah blah random text
            </p></li>
        </ol>

<img src=\"a.jpg\" alt=\"a\" />

    <a href=\"link.html\">link text</a>";
$code_is=preg_replace('/<li>\s{1,}(<p>|\b)/s','<li>',$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.

[james438]

Actually, this is better:

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

EDIT: even better:

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

[james438]

If this answers your question, please mark this thread as resolved.

[bluewalrus]

Been busy haven't had a chance to try it quite yet. What does the \b do?