Text and string filtering and laying out

[fabiuz]

Hallo,

I am going to build a little message board where users can wirte their messages. It is already working but and I am testing it with users messages... I have noticed some problems, I think common problems, and I hope somebody here could give me some suggestions to fix it:

a. some users are writing all text attached:

eg. "hallo...my name is peter,I live in usa..."

the problem here is that I want that "..." have a space after them and the same for ","char ... so that the lines could go "down" and the text is more readable

b. some users are typing long words and this cause layout problems:

eg. "I love youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

how to take care of this ?

c. I would like that the text typed by the user trought the form is showed as they type it... I see that new lines and indentation have some problems at the moment...

d. I would like to have a nice layout for my pages where masseges are displayed, how can I do that ? I see that some users are typing "Return" in the text form field when they see the box line lenght is over...and they start again on the new line...

Hope my english is not so bad and hope to get some suggestions about..

Thank you very much for aby help about!

[paulnaj]

(a) and (b) are both do-able but tricky ... see below.
(c) is a client-side issue (javascript)
(d) needs more explanation ... how do want to lay it out?

(a) & (b) You need to consider all the possible cases that cause problems.

For example,
1) "Hello...world" (no spaces)
2) "Hello ...world" (no spaces at end)
3) "Hello ... world" (spaces correct)
4) "Hello ... world" (too many spaces)
etc.

So, any string that contains the pattern ...

[word][spaces][...][spaces][word]

should translate to ...

[word][space][...][space][word]

You can use regular expressions to do this translation. Have a look at
perl-compatible regular expressions in the manual.

Come back for more help if necessary.

[Weedpacket]

(b) could be dealt with using [man]wordwrap[/man].

[fabiuz]

thanks for the answer !

...could you help me a little to use regular expressions on reg_replace ?

I cannot understand the sintax at

http://www.phpbuilder.com/manual/function.preg-replace.php

for example, what should I type if I want to detect things like:

word...word

and make it like

word... word

?

$find = array(".+[a-zA-Z0-9]");
$change_in = array("");

echo(preg_replace($find , $change_in, $text));

thank you

[paulnaj]

Here's an example, using \w, \s, ., +, * and \n for back-referencing.

//-----------------------------------------------------------
$phrases = array("Hello...world", "Hello ... world", "Hello ...world", "Hello... world", "Hello ... world", "Hello ... world", "Hello ... world");

$search = "/(\w+)\s...\s(\w+)/";
$replace = "\1 ... \2";

for($i = 0; $i < count($phrase_array); $i++){
$phrase_text = preg_replace ($search, $replace, $phrases[$i]);
echo "<hr>".$phrases[$i]." => ".$phrase_text;
}
//-----------------------------------------------------------

(I haven't put between PHP tags because they strip some of the backslashes)

[fabiuz]

Thank you very much !

I was trying in the mean time:

$find = array("/(\w+)( )(,|.)/", "/(\w+,)(\w+)/", "/(!|\?|.){1}(\w+)/");
$change_with = array("\1\3", "\1 \2", "\1 \2");

echo preg_replace($find , $change_with, $text_box);

it was working but not always... I will check your later.

What I want is put spaces where are missed and remove where are added.. eg.:

hallo...world --> hallo... world

Hi John!How are you --> Hi John! How are you

My name,my way --> My name, my way

the major problem now is how to detect and inluede in \w letters like:

è é ò

do you know how ?

Thanks a lot

[paulnaj]

Seems like \w includes characters like é ...

//-----------------------------------------
$phrase = "é";
$search = "/\w/";
$replace = "e";
$phrase_text = preg_replace ($search, $replace, $phrase);
echo "<hr>".$phrase." => ".$phrase_text;
//-----------------------------------------

[fabiuz]

Thanks again,

unfortunatly here my php 4.2 doesn't detect chars like è è à ò , I have tested your example and I get:

é => é

what could be wrong ?

thanks a lot!

[paulnaj]

Not sure ....

Try using a character class as an alternative to \w ...

//-----------------------------------------
$phrase = "é";
$search = "/(\w|[é])/";
$replace = "e";
$phrase_text = preg_replace ($search, $replace, $phrase);
echo "<hr>".$phrase." => ".$phrase_text;
//-----------------------------------------

If it works, then just include all your 'extended' chars in the square brackets, for example [éá].

If it doesn't work, mark this thread resolved and post as a new problem. It will probably be an issue to do with your current configuration, but I'm not sure what.

[fabiuz]

Yes !

in this way it is working.. thanks a lot!

Do you think this is normal ? I mean whould è be included in \w ?

Thanks a lot

[paulnaj]

Well, I'm glad it works.

On my computer é is covered by the \w meta-character, but I'm not sure if this is some kind of general php-configuration issue.

I'm still using PHP 4.1.x (dinosaur) so it also could be a PHP 4.2 issue.

Remember to mark the thread resolved.

PN

[fabiuz]

MHmm... still not resolved it seems :-(

Try this test phrase:

"Cioè...volecò,dirò,che cavolo...c'è"

using something like:

array("/(\w+|[éèòà]+)(\s*)(,|.)/", "/(\w+|[éèòà]+),{1})(\w+|[éèòà]+)/", "/(!|\?|.){1}(\w+|[éèòà]+)/")

array("\1\3", "\1 \2", "\1 \2")

I still get:

"Cioè... volecò,dirò,che cavolo... c'è"

so it isn't working :-( could it be a my sintax error ?
I have double checked and it seems ok for me :-?

[paulnaj]

Try it like this ...

---

$search = "/((\w|[é])+)\s...\s((\w|[é])+)/";
$replace = "\1 ... \2";

---

[fabiuz]

Unfortunatly not :-(

Thanks anyway... I wil try to open a new thread