Pattern matching with preg_replace

[SOL-ion]

Hi all,

I want to search a file for this information:

$ASSET_DB_NAME = "";

and change it for this information:

$ASSET_DB_NAME = "test";

I am not very good with using pattern matching. Could someone please suggest a way of doing it please?

I have tried the following, but it does not work.

preg_replace ('/ASSET_DB_NAME = \"\";/', '/ASSET_DB_NAME = \"'.$asset_db_name.'\"/', $search_file);

[mrhappiness]

$search_file = preg_replace ('/ASSET_DB_NAME = \"\";/', 'ASSET_DB_NAME = \"'.$asset_db_name.'\"', $search_file);

did u try this?

[swr]

Your regular expression looks about right, except you don't need the slashes on the replacement part. Also, you could use [man]str_replace[/man] instead of [man]preg_replace[/man] because you know the exact string you'll be replacing.

This all requires that $search_file contains the contents of the file.

Also (and this is probably the problem) you need to assign the return value of preg_replace/str_replace back to $search_file. If you do this:

preg_replace('/search/', 'replace', $search_file);

Nothing will happen. You need to do it like this instead:

$search_file = preg_replace('/search/', 'replace', $search_file);

[SOL-ion]

Thanks for your help so far. I have tried the above and it still seems not to be working. This leads me to think there is a problem with something else in the function. The config file definately being read and written again as my IDE is stating that.

Here is the code for the function:

function update_config_file ($asset_db_name) {
	global $CONFIG_PATH;

$config_file = fopen ($CONFIG_PATH.'database_config.inc.tmp.php', 'a+') or die ($php_errormsg);
$search_file = fread ($config_file, filesize ($CONFIG_PATH.'database_config.inc.tmp.php')) or die ($php_errormsg);

$search_file = preg_replace ('/$ASSET_DB_NAME = "";/', '$ASSET_DB_NAME = \"'.$asset_db_name.'\";', $search_file);

// seek back to the beginning of the file and write the string
rewind ($config_file);
if ( -1 == fwrite ($config_file, $search_file) ) { die ($php_errormsg); }
// adjust the file's length to just whats been written
ftruncate ($config_file, ftell ($config_file)) or die ($php_errormsg);

fclose ($config_file) or die ($php_errormsg);	
}  // update_config_file ($asset_db_name)