[Resolved] Easy pattern help

[Shawazi]

I STILL get tripped up on patterns ugh. Here is my code

$original = "|||| This is ||| asdfasfdsa || a sentence ||||";
echo "$original<br>";
$new = ereg_replace("^(|||).+(||)$"," ",$original) or die("failed");
echo "$new";

I am using | to delimit in a real code but I made this short script to test it out. I want to cut out from ||| to || so $new would echo
|||| This is a sentence ||||

I get this error:

Warning: ereg_replace(): REG_EMPTY

thx for any help

[swr]

In a regular expression, you can use (foo|bar) to match either "foo" or "bar". The vertical bar separates them.

In yours, you have (|||) and (||) which it is trying to interpret that way. But all the alternates you are specifying are blank, so you're getting an error (or so I guess).

You should use a backslash before the | to avoid it's special meaning.

Also, in your case you don't need brackets around the bars. Brackets are for specifying multiple strings, or for selecting text. For example, if you use preg_match("/blah (foo|bar) blah/", $string, $matches) then $matches[1] will contain either "foo" or "bar" if the string matched.

[Shawazi]

Ah yeah I noticed that shortly before reading this that I needed to escape the |||.

$new = ereg_replace("(\|\|\|).+(\|\|)"," ",$original) or die("failed");

I needed to get rid of the ^ and $ as well and useo ther tricks becuase it counts ||| in the first 3 of ||||