searching for characters

jpr

Currently I have code that does the following:

$text is a string
$search is a string of characters

I check to see if $search is contained in $text by using
eregi($search, $text);

How could I modify this so that after it determines that the $search is there, that its is not between the characters "<!" and "->".

For example:
this is a string of text, aa search_string zz sdafdsfdsds bla bla

Thanks!
Jason

PrivatePile

Well, i thought about this for a second and came up with the following code:

function remove_comments ($search)
{
    if(strstr($search,'<!')) 
    {
        $start = strpos($search, '<!');
        $comment = strstr($search, '<!');
        $length = strpos($comment, '->') + 1;
        $search = substr_replace($search, '', $start, $length);
        // recursive function so that it continues removing comments untill there are none left.
        $search = remove_comments ($search);   

    } else {
        return $string;
    }

}

$search= '<html> <!-- html comment --> <html>';

$search = remove_comments ($search);

// now you can check it for your text.
eregi($search, $text);

After about 30 minutes scratching my head over why it doesn't work, i started reading the user comments in the strstr section of the php manual where it states that since 4.2.3, the strstr function (among others) no longer work if the string contains the '<' character. I have not looked into this, but believe there will be a work around.

The above code should help you see how it could be done. You just need to find some functions that will work with the '<' char or write your own.

tekky

htmlentities() then match on &amp + whatever other text

why work around them when you can just work through them? 😉