[Resolved] Regular expressions help...

[gazchap]

This is probably dead easy, but nothing I'm trying is working. It might not even be necessary to use regexps.

Basically, I've got strings of data that are separated by a potentially unlimited number of tabs. For example (pretend that hyphens are tabs):

ID-DATA----FLAGS

1---5---2
2---5---1
3---124------4

What I want to do is to replace each separator with a single tab, thus rendering this:

ID-DATA-FLAGS

1-5-2
2-5-1
3-124-4

Is this possible?

//edit: Never mind, just tried this regexp: /-*-/ and all works fine. Can't explain why though 😉

[pyro]

I'm assuming you used something like this?

$str = preg_replace("/-*-/", "-", $str);

If so, this might be more logical:

$str = preg_replace("/-{2,}/", "-", $str);

Which will only do any replacing if there are two or more in sucession.

[gazchap]

Yeah, I never thought about that 🙂 Thanks 🙂

Every little bit of optimisation helps!

[pyro]

You bet... Oh, and to explain why your original regex worked:

the metacharacter tells it to find 0 or more of the previous item (in your case, the -). So, when it finds a dash, it will take all the dashes and turn them into your replacement, meaning that the dash after the (-*-) never even gets matched.