Simple regular expression help

dreamcaster

Hey everyone!
This should be easy for you regular expression gurus out there....I have a single php variable which contains html code and text in it. I need to write a regular expression to look into this variable and change all the single quotes to double quotes in the html code, but I want it to leave the text code alone. For example,
if:

$variable1 = "<IMG src='someURL'>He's Cool";

then it the value of variable1 would be turned into

<IMG src="someURL">He's Cool

It would be a huge help if someone could point me in the right direction. I am somewhat new to regular expressions. Thanks in advance!

tony_l

Well if the HTML is HARDCODED into the script, the easiest way is to open it in an editor like Textpad and use the find and replace function- which is quite simple.

BUT if the user is inputting HTML and you are just regurgitating it, then you need to consider the fact that it is dangerous to do such such things, because they can insert ANYTHING into your script and run other applications or even PHP code that can be detrimental to your site or server!

But if you think you can trust the users (Which I would hope you won't),the best way to do that is to use the ADDSLASHES() function. Here is a link to the function in the PHP Manual- http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.addslashes.php

hope that helps

Anon

You could also utilize

$string = addslashes(str_replace('"', "'", $string));

Anon

... nobody has really answered your question.
If I figure it out right, you want to change the ' to " only if they are inside an html tag!

So maybe let's try:

$text="<a href='try'>he's there</a>";
echo preg_replace("/(<.?)(')(.?)(')(.*?>)/","\1\"\3\"\5",$text);

Don't know if it's the most elegant one, but works in this case....