How to manipulate my string using regex in php?

Question

I have a string as below

$str = '"Mark Zuckerberg" facebook "A social utility connecting friends" profile';

I want it to be manipulated as follows

$output = '"Mark Zuckerberg" OR facebook OR "A social utility connecting friends" OR profile';

What I am trying to have in output is all the units combined with OR in between them. Here a unit is wither a single word when its not in double quotes or the complete string that falls within the single quotes.

I wanted to try with preg_replace. But am unable to get a correct regular expression to match. Kindly help!

Tim Pietzcker · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-05 10:44:10Z

3

$result = preg_replace('/ (?=(?:[^"]*"[^"]*")*[^"]*$)/', ' OR ', $subject);

works if you don't have any escaped quotes in your string. It replaces spaces only if they are followed by an even number of double quotes.

answered Jan 5, 2012 at 10:44

Tim Pietzcker

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Mark Baker · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-05 10:46:33Z

0

Any reason why preg_replace rather than a simple

$output = '"'.implode('" OR "',str_getcsv($str,' ')).'"';

answered Jan 5, 2012 at 10:46

Mark Baker

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