Trying to BOLD characters in string w/ preg_replace from multi-dimensional array???

[shaneog]

I have been racking my brain and can't figure this out???

I'm trying to or characters/words in my string and for some reason the tag is getting replaced when the $q includes the character "b".

It also does the same for

[shaneog]

I'm trying to get this to work 100% of the time no matter what order the "b" character is in the string / array. This is because $q will be a search query. Any ideas?????

Here is another broken down example... it outputs:

"You ab>re the best"

<?php

$row = "You are the best";

$q = "a b";

$q_array = explode(" ", $q);

foreach ($q_array as $key) $q_array1[] = "!($key)!i";

$str = preg_replace($q_array1, "<b>$1</b>", $row);

echo $str; 

?>

[buddylee17]

What about something like:

<?php
function makeBold($var){
   return (ereg_replace("[a|b]+[a-z]+[a-z]","<b>\\0</b>",$var));
}
$row = "You are the best";
echo makeBold($row);
?>

Outputs: You are the best

[shaneog]

Thanks for the function! However, I need it to BOLD the characters only, not the entire word. And it also needs to be case insensitive and work with arrays... any more ideas???

[buddylee17]

Try this one out:

<?php
$group =array("A","a","B","b");
$row = "You are the best At BaseBall";
$all = implode("|",$group); // convert the array into a pipe delimited string
echo (ereg_replace($all,"<b>\\0</b>",$row));
?>

[shaneog]

Thanks for your help buddylee17! Got it to work case insensitive using eregi_replace.

[shaneog]

Just wondering if you might know... is there an easier way to replace characters in an array without converting the array into strings?

For example, if I want to replace characters in an array I need to use:

foreach($row as $str) echo(eregi_replace($q,"<b>\\0</b>",$str));

So rather than running the function over an over it could just replace characters inside the array? Sort of like preg_replace.

Let me know if you think there is a way...

Thanks

[digital-ether]

It would be a lot more efficient to just use the string replacement functions such as str_replace() or str_ireplace()

$replace = array('a', 'b');
$replacements = array('<b>a</b>', '<b>b</b>');

$subject = "You are the best At BaseBall";

$subject= str_ireplace($replace, $replacements, $subject);

echo $subject;

or

$replace = array('a', 'b');

$subject = "You are the best At BaseBall";

foreach($replace as $x) {
$subject  = str_ireplace($x, '<b>'.$x.'</b>', $subject);
}

echo $subject;

The string functions are much faster then the regular expression engine.

If you do use regex, the PCRE functions are faster. http://www.php.net/preg_replace