Is this possible? treat string loaded from files as string

Tea_J

Hi guys

When i program displays i like to use templates.. i design templates in dreamweaver, and save them as HTML files.

my templates contains something like this:

<b>My Name is ::name::</b>

Then in php, i load the template file with

file_get_contents command..

then i do a preg_replace routine, replacing all instances of ::name:: with $name and ::age:: with $age, and so forth..

I was wondering if there was a way for me to do away with the CPU intensive preg_replace routine, and do something like this:

my template would look like

<b>My Name is $name</b>

and all i should have to do is echo it outl like so..

echo $template_contents;

the idea is to have it seem as if my codes looked like this:

echo "<b>My Name is $name</b>";

but my output isnt as expected..

for example when i call

display.php?name=tea

the output is:

[b]My Name is $name[/b]

instead of

[b]My Name is tea[/b]

i guess this is because my $template_contents variable is treated like a packaged string of some sort where in the real variables ("$name") arent processed anymore...

I tried doing:

echo eval($template_contents);

but that didnt work

any ideas?
tea

mrhappiness

eval("echo '".$template."'");

maybe like this?

but why do you think eval is faster than preg_replace?

Tea_J

hey man, thanks.. but you missed an ";" at the end of your eval string....

this worked for me:

eval("echo $template;");

but as soon as I use the REAL template, i get this error

Parse error: parse error, unexpected '<', expecting ',' or ';'...

im guessing it's because of the HTML tags in my template... is there anyway to counter this?

but why do you think eval is faster than preg_replace?

well, i am wasnt really sure if eval is faster than preg_replace, but I was thinking if i could just make it seem like a normal echo with $variables interpreted, that would be faster..

mrhappiness

Originally posted by Tea_J
im guessing it's because of the HTML tags in my template... is there anyway to counter this?

you see the quotes in my example?

well, i am wasnt really sure if eval is faster than preg_replace, but I was thinking if i could just make it seem like a normal echo with $variables interpreted, that would be faster..

i don't think so, just have it eval and preg_replace the template for example 10 times and compare the time needed

Tea_J

you see the quotes in my example?

well i used your exact code:

 eval("echo '".$template."'");

got the error:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_LNUMBER, expecting ',' or ';'

i added the ";" character needed:

eval("echo '".$template."';");

still got the same error..

well, i think im going back to preg_replace anyway.. thanks!

tea

wempy

is it not the case that the php parser will ignore variable names inside single quotes and expand them inside double quotes