preg replace with boundary and array

[haamro]

Hi there,

I am trying to delete words in the sentence contained in an array.

I cannot use str_replace, because it replaces that character within another word. (e.g. , if I try to delete "is"; "this" becomes "th")


So, I wanted to use preg_replace with boundary, but how do I add "/b" to the array ? ( I don't want to change my array)

$ignore=array("is","a","the");
$sentence="this is the way I want";

My output should be = "this way I want"

thanx

[astupidname]

Assuming $ignore will never contain special characters which would trip up the regular expression, the below should work out if $ignore is always alphabetic words:

$ignore=array("is","a","the");
$sentence="this is the way I want";
//create regular expression, using the items in $ignore,
//which in this case the regular expression will look like: /\b(is|a|the)\b/
$rex = '/\b('.implode('|', $ignore).')\b/';
echo preg_replace($rex, '', $sentence);

Note you may want to add an 'i' modifier to make $rex case insensitive:

$rex = '/\b('.implode('|', $ignore).')\b/i';

[haamro]

Works like a charm !
Thanx for your help :-)

[haamro]

* Sorry couldn't update previous post.

Thanx astupidname, what if $ignore has unicode character, real unicode word (not अ&#2309)

/i/u didn't work for me.

[penders]

/i/u didn't work for me.

This should be: /iu

[haamro]

thanx, that worked !
but how do I use \b with /iu ?

[penders]

You should just be able to use them together, as in Readie's code above. Or are you finding that it's not working?

The "/" delimits the regular expression (regex). The "iu" are pattern modifiers and appear after the regex. The "\b" is an escape sequence that appears inside the regex and matches a word boundary (the position between a word and a non-word character).

So, in Readie's code, this becomes...

$rex = '/\b('.implode('|', $ignore).')\b/iu';

[Readie]

as in Readie's code above

:/ I didn't post here :P

Assuming $ignore will never contain special characters which would trip up the regular expression

You can get around this by using the preg_quote() function [uk3.php.net...]

$rex = '/\b('.preg_quote(implode('|', $ignore)).')\b/'; 

[penders]

:/ I didn't post here :P

lol, sorry! :& I think I must have been flitting between different threads!? I meant "astupidname's code above"...!