str replace loop add 1 to variable

[jman11]

how come this loop doesnt work?

for($i=0;$i<1000;$i++){
$contents = str_replace("a",$i,$contents); // Contents being any random sentence with multiple 'a's in it
}

it should add +1 everything it replaces but it just returns 0's for all of the 'a' replacements

[TheMadScientist]

It changes all occurrences of 'a' to 0 the first time through...

[jman11]

i know that, how do i make it add 1 to each replacement though?

[TheMadScientist]

Something like this:

$contents = str_replace("a",'0',$contents); // Contents being any random sentence with multiple 'a's in it 
for($i=i;$i<1000;$i++){ 
 $contents = str_replace(($i-1),$i,$contents); // Contents being any random sentence with multiple 'a's in it 
} 

[jman11]

lol are you srs? that made a huge loop really far down the page man. are you sure you can loop like this ive tried lots of different things, and none work. yours didnt work either :/ any other ideas?

[TheMadScientist]

K, I'm going to let some other people answer your questions for a while after this one... I usually code on the screen, so sometimes you have to trouble shoot and work with what I show you a bit... The problem is I typed $i=i not 1... Other than that it should do exactly what you asked for:

$contents = str_replace("a",'0',$contents); // Contents being any random sentence with multiple 'a's in it  
for($i=1;$i<1000;$i++){ 
 $contents = str_replace(($i-1),$i,$contents); // Contents being any random sentence with multiple 'a's in it 
} 

[jman11]

no i noticed you typed i, i replaced with a 1. still what i described. i know how to troubleshoot problems n such, but i just dont get how to get it to replace only the word, and not echo the whole $content with it. because then it only returns the last value

[rocknbil]

how do i make it add 1 to each replacement though?

What is the task here?

Do you want to replace each "a" with "a 1" or "a (number found in this block)"? (like a 1 ca 2r, etc.)

Are they only the article "a"

This is a car.

or all "a's"?

This is a car.

Case insensitive or exact match?

I think you might have to explode the characters and recompile it, or use a regexp solution.

$new_content=''; 
$counter=0; 
$target='a'; 
$characters = explode('',$contents); 
foreach ($characters as $char) { 
 $new_content .= $char; 
 // For case insensitive, use regexp 
 // if (preg_match("/^$target$/i", $char)) { 
 if ($char == $target) {  
  $counter++; 
  $new_content .= " $counter"; 
 } 
} 
echo $new_content; 

There is a way to extract the numeric index of a match using preg_replace/preg_match, that might be more graceful but am short on time at the moment, and I'm not sure what the task is here.