preg_replace : uppercased backreference as replacement

[stephan]

Hello there!

I've been trying to figure out a solution to this problem below for quite som time now, with no success. I would be glad if some of you could help me with this (if it's even possible).

Background,
I have two arrays. One with 'search' regexps and another array with its corresponding 'replace' strings (I have slimmed the arrays and only shown the one that I can't find a solution for).

What I'd like to do, is to get the text string 'mr. west' ($string) in proper case, using the preg_replace function seen below.

There is of course no problem with getting 'mr. '|'mr.' to become 'Mr. '|Mr.' since it's static, however, for the second backreference (with different surnames), I have no clue on how to complete it.

I'd appreciate all help on this! Thank you very much for your time!

$string  = "mr. west";
$search  = array (
           "/mr.( )?(.)/",
           );
$replace = array (
           "Mr.\\1\\2",
           );
echo preg_replace($search, $replace, $string);

Have a good one!

Best regards,
Stephan

[laserlight]

Have you considered using [man]ucwords/man instead of regex?

[stephan]

Hey laserlight!

Thank you for your input!

I should have been more specific. The string "mr. west" was a bad example. since the strings will not only contain names.

Therefor a string such as "mr. west will come to town" would be a more appropriate example. The result I'd like to receive is then "Mr. West will come to town. In other words.. only the first letter after the static 'Mr. ' should be uppercase.

Hope that clarified the situation a bit more.

Thanks again! 😃

[laserlight]

You could try using preg_replace_callback()

$string  = "mr. west is here";
$search  = '/(mr\. ?)(\w+)/i';
echo preg_replace_callback(
	$search,
	create_function('$matches', 'return ucfirst($matches[1]) . ucfirst($matches[2]);'),
	$string);