search & replace on substrings

[timbr8ks]

I have a text block and I want people to be able to type this:

|| imagename.jpg left ||

anywhere in the text. When submitted (or perhaps when displayed), my application needs to find that string and replace it with:

<img src="imagename.jpg" align="left">

How do I do this?

Thanks.

[rIkLuNd]

Try this:

<?php
$str = "some text... || image.jpg || more text...";
$str = preg_replace("#\\|\\| (.*?)\ \|\\|#","<img src=\"\\\1\">",$str);
?>

I haven't tested this, so I don't know if it works...

[timbr8ks]

Thanks for your reply. How would I get the alignment in there?

Ultimately, what I'd really like to do is:

1. have it find this:

blah blah blah || imagename1.jpg left || blah blah blah

2. look up imagename1.jpg in the image table

3. and replace the string with this:

blah blah blah <a href="imagename1.jpg" align="left" height="50" width="120" border="1">

where height and width and border are stored in the image table when the image is uploaded. However, I'm fine starting with an abbreviated version of this, but I do need to get the left / right align thing in there.

Again, thanks for the reply. I appreciate the help.