Parsing variables from files

Anon

Hi,

I'm attempting to write a script which sends users a confirmation once they have created an account at a site I'm working on. I would like to send them a personalised email that gives them a reminder of their username and password.

I've attempted to read in a file that's similar to:

--
Hello $firstname $surname,

Your username is: $username
Your password is: $password

Once I have read the file using fread(), is there any way to get php to parse the contents and convert the embedded variables ($surname, $username etc.) into true variables?

ie, if I have (for argument's sake):

$firstname="Matt";
$surname="Painter";

after parsing the file, the contents should be:

Hello Matt Painter,
...

I've had a look through php's string functions but I can't find anything - I'm sure there must be a way to do this!

Many thanks,
Matt

Anon

echo "hello".$firstname.$surname; -??? sorry Matt I do not understand the question!

Anon

Sorry, what I was meaning is this:

In the function in my code, an email is sent - the contents of which are retrieved from a file.

I wanted the email to be personalised, so I thought on an offchance that maybe one could simply embed php variables into the file, such as:

"Hello $firstname $surname"

However, when this is read into php, the 'variables' are treated as plain text (so the email to the individual actually does rea "Hello $firstname $surname").

I was just wondering if there was a way in php to read files (actually, to parse variables) and to treat any embedded variables AS variables - not as plain text.

I've got around the problem now by using several lots of str_replace(), but I still wonder if there's a more elegant way of doing it.

Hope this clears up the explanation!

Matt

Anon

Search the forum for the articles about replacing keywords.

In your textfile, put something like this:

Hello <username>, welcome blabla

then use regular expressions (describe in the articles) to replace <username> with the real username.