Code; help!

[freekw]

Hi,

Can somebody help me with this;
I found a piece of code and i want 2 use it
but i can't find out what i exactly does.

here is the code;
$item = preg_replace("![EMAIL(.*?)]!is","<a href=\"mailto:$email\"\1>$email</a>", $item);

I know that preg_replace is a function that
replace a code when a condition is true, but i doesn't understand the condition.

Thx

[[deleted]]

This regexp will look for '[email' followed by whatever, followed by ']' and it will replace that by an href tag.
it re-uses whatever matched (.*?) though \1 (slash slash one).

It's a strange regexp, using exclamation marks and uppercase letters while the 'i' after the pattern means 'case insensitive'

---

A forum, a FAQ, what else do you need?

Time to YAPF!: http://www.hvt-automation.nl/yapf/

[freekw]

org. code:
$item = preg_replace("![EMAIL(.*?)]!is","<a href=\"mailto:$email\"\1>$email</a>", $item);

and what is ment with the ' ! '??
so this (.*?) means whatever?

Does the next code gives the same result if you don't want the (.*?) option?
eregi_replace("[EMAIL]","<a href=\"mailto:$email\">$email</a>"

Thx 4 your answer!

[[deleted]]

Regular expressions are always 'delimited' by a character, to define where the pattern starts and where it stops. The delimiter can be anything as long as you don't mix it up with the pattern itself. It is most common to use the forward slash, but any character will do. This person chose the '!'.
(.*?)

. = any character
* = zero or more times
? = non-greedy, may not include whatever is next in the pattern
() = make this a block, whatever is in here is treated as one statement. This means you can difine how many times it should be repeated, and you can reference it again later using the 'backslash blackslash one' method.

"Does the next code gives the same result if you don't want the (.*?) option?"

Try it and see.... :-)