preg_replace with "[g]" as the string to find

VisionsOfCody

I'm having rpobs with this because my string pattern to find is "[g]" and when i use the following code :

$str = "this is the text to make [g]bold[/g]";
$str = preg_replace('[g]', '<span class="bold">', $str);
echo '<br>'.$str;

it just outputs this :

this is the text to make []bold[/]

so the problem is obviously the square brackets which seem to have some specific meaning in the regular expression. So i tried escaping the brackets with backslashes but that doesn't work - it just outputs this error:

Warning: Delimiter must not be alphanumeric or backslash in

could someone tell me what i need to do to be able to search for "[g]" and "[/g]" ?

thanks

laserlight

That's because you need to have delimiters, e.g. slashes:

/\[g\]/

EDIT:
you might want to try this approach:

$str = "this is the text to make [g]bold[/g], really [g]bold[/g]";
echo preg_replace('/\[g\](.*?)\[\/g\]/', '<span class="bold">\1</span>', $str);

VisionsOfCody

that's excellent - I'm not entirely sure i understand how it works with the "\1" but the important thing is that it works!

thank you

laserlight

I'm not entirely sure i understand how it works with the "\1" but the important thing is that it works!

You should learn to understand it, otherwise you cannot properly extend it or maintain it.
Read the PHP Manual on Regular Expression Functions (Perl-Compatible).

VisionsOfCody

thanks for the link - very helpful indeed :

jut from reading that, I managed to write

$str = preg_replace('/[(.?)->(.?)]/', '<a href="\2">\1</a>', $str);

which replaces

[line->http://www.domain.com/index.php]

with

it's not a big deal, i know, but i couldn't do that when i got up this morning ...

thanks again