Regex/PHP Replace any repeating word group

Question

How can match

$string = "Foo Bar (Any Group - ANY GROUP Baz)";

Should return as "Foo Bar (Any Group - Baz)"

Is it possible without bruteforce as here Replace repeating strings in a string ?

Edit: * The group could consist of 1-4 words while each word could match [A-Za-z0-9\/\(\)]{1,30} * The separator would always be -

Define "repeating word group" - does it have to be more than one word? How do you define a word? What separates words? How far may they be apart? — Tim Pietzcker
– Tim Pietzcker, Commented May 22, 2012 at 20:42
I think 2 notions are important for that: - The minimal length of the repeated group. - The possible separators between the groups. — Savageman
– Savageman, Commented May 22, 2012 at 20:43
The group could consist of 1-4 words while each word could match [A-Za-z0-9 \/\(\)]{1,30} — Martin
– Martin, Commented May 22, 2012 at 20:46
So if a space can be part of a word, how then are words separated from each other? — Tim Pietzcker
– Tim Pietzcker, Commented May 22, 2012 at 20:46
You are not really looking to replace a word, but an entire phrase which may be more difficult. — PenguinCoder
– PenguinCoder, Commented May 22, 2012 at 20:50

Tim Pietzcker · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-22 20:58:16Z

5

Leaving the space out of the list of allowed "word" characters, the following works for your example:

$result = preg_replace(
    '%
    (                 # Match and capture
     (?:              # the following:...
      [\w/()]{1,30}   # 1-30 "word" characters
      [^\w/()]+       # 1 or more non-word characters
     ){1,4}           # 1 to 4 times
    )                 # End of capturing group 1
    ([ -]*)           # Match any number of intervening characters (space/dash)
    \1                # Match the same as the first group
    %ix',             # Case-insensitive, verbose regex
    '\1\2', $subject);

edited May 22, 2012 at 20:58

answered May 22, 2012 at 20:50

Tim Pietzcker

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2 Comments

Martin Over a year ago

Hi, I need to bump this old thread. Would it be possible to ignore possible blanks? So "(Any Group - ANYGROUP Baz)" would return "(Any Group - Baz)" ?

Tim Pietzcker Over a year ago

@Martin: I can think of an (ugly) way how this could work, but it would be a completely different approach than the one I've used here, so I think this should be put into a new question to avoid confusing people.

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