I have a string that is something like "apple|banana|peach|cherry".
How can I use regular expressions to search this list and replace another string with a certain value if there is a match?
For example:
$input = 'There is an apple tree.';
Change that to: "There is an <fruit>apple</fruit> tree."
Thanks, Amanda
Try this:
<?php
$patterns ="/(apple|banana|peach|cherry)/";
$replacements = "<fruit>$1</fruit>";
$output = preg_replace($patterns, $replacements, "There is an apple tree.");
echo $output;
?>
For more details please look at the php manual on preg_replace
Update: @Amanda: As per your comment you may modify this code to:
$patterns ="/(^|\W)(apple|banana|peach|cherry)(\W|$)/";
$replacements = "$1<fruit>$2</fruit>$3";
to avoid matching impeach and scrapple
Although, if you want to match directly, it's faster to use str_replace or str_ireplace like that:
$text = "some apple text";
$fruits = explode("|", "apple|orange|peach");
$replace = array('replace apple', 'replace orange', 'replace peach');
$new = str_replace($fruits, $replace, $text);
$input = 'There is an apple tree.';
$output = preg_replace('/(apple|banana|peach|cherry)/', "<fruit>$1</fruit>", $input);
Overall there is probably a better way to do this, but that would involve you giving a lot more details about your setup and overall goal. But you can do this:
$input = preg_replace('~(apple|banana|peach|cherry)~','<fruit>$1</fruit>',$input);
