Is this the wrong forum for this question - or does no-one else have a clue about this either?

At 09:43 AM 1/12/06, Frank Bax wrote:
As I understand the docs for preg_replace(), I can enclose an PCRE expression in parenthesis and use a backreference in the replace string; but it's not working!

Data coming from another system contains a lot of data in one text record which I must parse. Individual elements in the record are separated by $. I want to "fix" elements that contain
        dollar-alpha-space-space-digits-dollar
and replace the second space (between word and number) with a plus character to end up with
        dollar-alpha-space-plus-digits-dollar

An example of input string:
$prop = '$Fencing 11$Lumber 17$Weight: 317 Stones$Energy Resist 2%$';
Notice that Fencing and Lumber have two spaces.  I want to end up with:
$prop = '$Fencing +11$Lumber +17$Weight: 317 Stones$Energy Resist 2%$';
Notice that original and final strings are the same length.

preg_replace( ' (\d+\$)', '+$1', $prop ); /* results in dollar-alpha-space-space-plus, why have digits-dollar have disappeared? */

$Fencing  +Lumber  +Weight: 317 Stones$Energy Resist 2%$

Although the docs say that $0 should backreference the whole pattern, instead it seems to match the pattern in parenthesis, but this code : preg_replace( ' (\d+\$)', '+$0', $prop ); /* results in dollar-alpha-space-space-plus-digits-dollar */

$Fencing  +11$Lumber  +17$Weight: 317 Stones$Energy Resist 2%$

Still contains the two blanks!!

In neither of my test cases is the result string the same length as original.

I'm running PHP 4.4.0 on OpenBSD 3.7

--
PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php

Reply via email to