regex [preg_replace()] - help with back references?

[sfullman]

OK, you're looking at an example sentence, with ample words to use as an example :-) Notice the use of the word ample here.

suppose I want to make ample bold but not ample in EXample. I know how to do the regular expression:

/\s+ample(\s+|$)/i

However if I do this:

$regex='/\s+(ample)\s+/i';

$str="OK, you're looking at an example sentence, with ample words to use as an example :-) Notice the use of the word ample here.";
$str=preg_replace($regex,'<b>ample</b>',$str);

There are two problems:
1. I'm going to munch the whitespace on either end
2. I'm going to walk over the case of the word Ample or AMPLE.

I know this is with backreferences or some such term, any assistance on this? Thank you,
Samuel Fullman

[jdwmk]

Hi,

You just need to use
$regex='/(\s+ample\s+)/i';

$str=preg_replace($regex,'<b>$1</b>',$str);

$1 being the string found in each iteration of the regex.

Thus you get back what you search for without losing the original case or spaces.

Jeff

[Weedpacket]

or

preg_replace('/\bample\b/i', '<strong>$0</strong>', $text); $0 is the entire matched string, and \b matches the position between wordlike and nonwordlike characters (it doesn't match any characters).