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For example, here is a string I would perform this replacement on:
This is a test! <a href="test.com">test</a> <img src="test.jpg" alt="test" />
In that example, the word 'test' is all over the place. I would only want to replace the first instance of it though, because the rest are all in either a link or image tag.
I was thinking about ereg_replace, but could not get it sorted out properly. Any thoughts? :)
I have limited experience with regular expressions in general. While I do use them for basic tasks, I have not been able to find any examples of anything similar to this.
Edit: What if I did something like this:
1) Find instances of A in links and images and rename them to something else - Z
2) Perform the normal search and replace for A to B
3) Afterwards, change Z back to A
[edited by: Aleister at 9:05 pm (utc) on Nov. 12, 2006]
And you don't even have to learn regex, since your text is always just a string.
Do your self a favor though, and learn regex. It's painful at first. Liberating for the rest of your life.
function protect_text($content, $a) {
return stripslashes(str_replace($a, "TEMPTEXT", $content));
}// protect text between < and >
$content = preg_replace("^(<)\n?([\S¦\s]*?)\n?(>)^ie", "'<' . protect_text('$2', $a) . '>'", $content);// protect text in hrefs
$content = preg_replace("^(<a)\n?([\S¦\s]*?)\n?(</a>)^ie", "'<a' . protect_text('$2', $a) . '</a>'", $content);// replace A with replacement text B
$content = str_replace($a, $b, $content);// set TEMPTEXT back to A
$content = str_replace('TEMPTEXT', $a, $content);
(It has been simplified a bit, to make it easier to read)
This is very far from optimal, and I am sure there are many cases that this will not handle very well, such as newlines in the href or img tag, but it works somewhat :)
If someone has a better way to do this, I would love to hear it :) I found many sites where people were asking about this, but I did not ever see anything aside from this type of solution.
[edited by: Aleister at 10:07 pm (utc) on Nov. 12, 2006]
/(>[^<]*?)(test)/
It should check for all appearances of test between > and < (outside tags)
<p>This is a test! <a href="test.com">test</a> <img src="test.jpg" alt="test" /></p>
Hope this helps you.
I'm not sure how it will work with preg_replace. I tested it with preg_match and it finds the first test (in $result[2]). I don't know how to change it to find just test.
Michal
<a href="test">this text here</a>
And if the string I am processing does not start/end with a tag, it would not catch anything at all:
sample text
[edited by: Aleister at 11:07 pm (utc) on Nov. 12, 2006]
I thought you want to change all text, appearing in link as well.
You would have to add a not </a> following clauzule.
Hard thing to do, really.
Sorry for misunderstanding.
Michal
The supplied content is actually just part of an html page, so it would not neccesarily have the tags, but that is fine - and for what this is needed for, it is most likely the best option.
In theory I could also just append a less than and greater than character to the beginning and end of the string, and remove it afterwards. :)
A 100% solution would require too many 'what ifs' and would be a regex nightmare anyway :)
[edited by: Aleister at 12:25 am (utc) on Nov. 14, 2006]
