load a file that contains variables

philippo

I'm trying to load a file and replace all variables in it with their values.

currently I'm doing it like this:

in my file (confirm.txt) I use varibles like this: "hi %name%, how are you?"
then I'm going to replace %name% with $name:

$message = fread($fp = fopen("confirm.txt", 'r'), filesize("confirm.txt"));
fclose($fp);
while(preg_match('/(%.+%)/U',$message, $matches) == TRUE){
$matchvar = str_replace('%','',$matches[1]);
$body_txt = str_replace($matches[1], $$matchvar, $message);
}

That's probably one of the worst way to do it!
Let me know if there's an easier way. I'd like to keep varibles in my file like this: "hi $name, how are you?"

thanx
Philippo

yelvington

See the manual for eval(), which will evaluate data as PHP code. Note that there are security issues that arise from its use.

You also could probably put together a regular expression that would perform this function.

philippo

great!
thanx a lot, steve!

that's what I was looking for!
Could you tell me what are the sucurity issues? Noone should have access to my .txt-file, so I don't need to worry about security - right?

what would be the regular expression?

Philippo

brandonschnell

assuming no one can modify your text file, you're probably ok, the danger is if they can modify it or replace it then they can do about anything they want.

heres what i do. fopen the file to $data, create the vars to be available in the script, then replace $var with <? echo $var; ?> and eval the page as php.

 $data = eregi_replace ("\\$[0-9a-z_]+", "<? echo \\0; ?>", "$data");

 echo eval ("?>$data<?");