Can someone please explain some preg_replace? Thxs

[brianb]

Hello...

Having a problem getting this to work:

// Clean the number of any commas
$html_code = preg_replace( ',', '', $html_code );

// Clean the number of any dollar signs
$html_code = preg_replace( '$', '', $html_code );

Heres the error I get:

Warning: Unexpected character in input: ' in /home/mortgag/public_html/test.php on line 16

Warning: Unexpected character in input: ' in /home/mortgag/public_html/test.php on line 16

Warning: No ending delimiter ',' found in /home/mortgag/public_html/test.php on line 16

Warning: No ending delimiter '$' found in /home/mortgag/public_html/test.php on line 19

Any ideas why?

[axo]

oh, for your purpose it is enough to make

$html_code = str_replace(",","",$html-code);
$html_code = str_replace("$", "", $html_code);

str_replace is more simple and mostly faster than preg_replace, for that you shouldn't use preg if you don't really need it 🙂

anyway, the right mode to use preg_replace would be:

$html_code = preg_replace( '/,/', '', $html_code );
// remove dollar sign.
$html_code = preg_replace('/\$/','',$html_code );

also be careful! the dollar sign has a special purpose in PCRE, which means you have to mask it in the regular expression by a backslash to be able to find it. otherwise the dollar sign means the "ending" of the regular expression.
this wouldn't also be a problem if you used str_replace instead.

[axo]

oh... i thought about it when i was in bed already 🙂

$html_code = preg_replace( '/[^0-9]/', '', $html_code );

this code will remove everything what is NOT any number from your $html_code string .

cya
axo