Multiple ereg/eregi on a single string?

haze

Hi everyone, I'm new here 🙂

I'm trying to code a smilie system, similar to the one used on vbulletin.

I can do a single eregi_replace:

$newstring = eregi_replace(":bah:", "<img src=\"smilies/bah.gif\">", $string);

but how could I make it so that I can do the same affect, but many smilies at the same time?

Thanks in advance,

Rob.

planetsim

Have all the Smilies in a database table. And do a while loop.

haze

Originally posted by planetsim
Have all the Smilies in a database table. And do a while loop.

A database isn't an option... :erk:

axo

try this ...

<? 
$patterns = array(
":D"	=> "biggrin.gif",
":)"	=> "smile.gif",
":("	=> "sad.gif",
";)"	=> "wink.gif",
);

foreach($patterns as $key => $val) {
	$patterns[$key] = "<img src='images/smiles/".$val."' border=0>";
}

// test string
$foo = "hello, i am your text string ;) :D :D :D ;)";

// replace smile icons with image gifs.
$foo = strtr($foo, $patterns);

// print out
echo $foo;
?>

haze

Thanks, I'll give that a try tomorrow. 🙂

axo

and don't use eregi_replace too much! 😉
it is much slower than preg_replace in most cases, preg_replace won't be case sensitive using /i at the end of the pattern;

for simple string replacements it's much faster to use str_replace, in your case strtr should be optimal, because you're walking an array.

if you used

foreach($patterns as $key => $val) {
	$foo = preg_replace("/".$key."/i", "<img src='images/smiles/".$val."' border=0>\n",$foo);
}

... this would be very much slower depending on the length of the text and the number of smiley-replacements, because each loop would look up the whole text and preg_replace is always a bit slow because of it's 'intelligence'... 😉
if you really need preg_replace with smiles, don't forget to add a backslash "\" in front of each bracket "(" or ")" or "[" "]" or "{" "}" ...

Weedpacket

And note too that preg_replace and str_replace can take arrays as their arguments, so you wouldn't need the loop.