preg_replace
(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7)
preg_replace — Perform a regular expression search and replace
Description
$pattern
, mixed $replacement
, mixed $subject
[, int $limit
= -1
[, int &$count
]] ) : mixed
Searches subject
for matches to
pattern
and replaces them with
replacement
.
Parameters
-
pattern
-
The pattern to search for. It can be either a string or an array with strings.
Several PCRE modifiers are also available.
-
replacement
-
The string or an array with strings to replace. If this parameter is a string and the
pattern
parameter is an array, all patterns will be replaced by that string. If bothpattern
andreplacement
parameters are arrays, eachpattern
will be replaced by thereplacement
counterpart. If there are fewer elements in thereplacement
array than in thepattern
array, any extrapattern
s will be replaced by an empty string.replacement
may contain references of the form \\n or $n, with the latter form being the preferred one. Every such reference will be replaced by the text captured by the n'th parenthesized pattern. n can be from 0 to 99, and \\0 or $0 refers to the text matched by the whole pattern. Opening parentheses are counted from left to right (starting from 1) to obtain the number of the capturing subpattern. To use backslash in replacement, it must be doubled ("\\\\" PHP string).When working with a replacement pattern where a backreference is immediately followed by another number (i.e.: placing a literal number immediately after a matched pattern), you cannot use the familiar \\1 notation for your backreference. \\11, for example, would confuse preg_replace() since it does not know whether you want the \\1 backreference followed by a literal 1, or the \\11 backreference followed by nothing. In this case the solution is to use ${1}1. This creates an isolated $1 backreference, leaving the 1 as a literal.
When using the deprecated e modifier, this function escapes some characters (namely ', ", \ and NULL) in the strings that replace the backreferences. This is done to ensure that no syntax errors arise from backreference usage with either single or double quotes (e.g. 'strlen(\'$1\')+strlen("$2")'). Make sure you are aware of PHP's string syntax to know exactly how the interpreted string will look.
-
subject
-
The string or an array with strings to search and replace.
If
subject
is an array, then the search and replace is performed on every entry ofsubject
, and the return value is an array as well. -
limit
-
The maximum possible replacements for each pattern in each
subject
string. Defaults to -1 (no limit). -
count
-
If specified, this variable will be filled with the number of replacements done.
Return Values
preg_replace() returns an array if the
subject
parameter is an array, or a string
otherwise.
If matches are found, the new subject
will
be returned, otherwise subject
will be
returned unchanged or NULL
if an error occurred.
Errors/Exceptions
As of PHP 5.5.0 E_DEPRECATED
level error is emitted when
passing in the "\e" modifier. As of PHP 7.0.0 using the "\e" modifier is an error;
an E_WARNING
is emitted in this case.
Changelog
Version | Description |
---|---|
7.0.0 | Support for the /e modifier has been removed. Use preg_replace_callback() instead. |
5.5.0 | The /e modifier is deprecated. Use preg_replace_callback() instead. See the PREG_REPLACE_EVAL documentation for additional information about security risks. |
5.1.0 |
Added the count parameter
|
Examples
Example #1 Using backreferences followed by numeric literals
<?php
$string = 'April 15, 2003';
$pattern = '/(\w+) (\d+), (\d+)/i';
$replacement = '${1}1,$3';
echo preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $string);
?>
The above example will output:
April1,2003
Example #2 Using indexed arrays with preg_replace()
<?php
$string = 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.';
$patterns = array();
$patterns[0] = '/quick/';
$patterns[1] = '/brown/';
$patterns[2] = '/fox/';
$replacements = array();
$replacements[2] = 'bear';
$replacements[1] = 'black';
$replacements[0] = 'slow';
echo preg_replace($patterns, $replacements, $string);
?>
The above example will output:
The bear black slow jumps over the lazy dog.
By ksorting patterns and replacements, we should get what we wanted.
<?php
ksort($patterns);
ksort($replacements);
echo preg_replace($patterns, $replacements, $string);
?>
The above example will output:
The slow black bear jumps over the lazy dog.
Example #3 Replacing several values
<?php
$patterns = array ('/(19|20)(\d{2})-(\d{1,2})-(\d{1,2})/',
'/^\s*{(\w+)}\s*=/');
$replace = array ('\3/\4/\1\2', '$\1 =');
echo preg_replace($patterns, $replace, '{startDate} = 1999-5-27');
?>
The above example will output:
$startDate = 5/27/1999
Example #4 Strip whitespace
This example strips excess whitespace from a string.
<?php
$str = 'foo o';
$str = preg_replace('/\s\s+/', ' ', $str);
// This will be 'foo o' now
echo $str;
?>
Example #5 Using the count
parameter
<?php
$count = 0;
echo preg_replace(array('/\d/', '/\s/'), '*', 'xp 4 to', -1 , $count);
echo $count; //3
?>
The above example will output:
xp***to 3
Notes
Note:
When using arrays with
pattern
andreplacement
, the keys are processed in the order they appear in the array. This is not necessarily the same as the numerical index order. If you use indexes to identify whichpattern
should be replaced by whichreplacement
, you should perform a ksort() on each array prior to calling preg_replace().
See Also
- PCRE Patterns
- preg_quote() - Quote regular expression characters
- preg_filter() - Perform a regular expression search and replace
- preg_match() - Perform a regular expression match
- preg_replace_callback() - Perform a regular expression search and replace using a callback
- preg_split() - Split string by a regular expression
- preg_last_error() - Returns the error code of the last PCRE regex execution
English translation
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Document created the 30/01/2003, last modified the 26/10/2018
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