[RESOLVED] condensable ereg_replace?

[scrupul0us]

can these statements be condensed?

$contents[$i] = ereg_replace("(var sym).*(= \[ )","",$contents[$i]);
$contents[$i] = ereg_replace("(, \])","",$contents[$i]);
$contents[$i] = ereg_replace("'","",$contents[$i]);
$contents[$i] = ereg_replace("\n","",$contents[$i]);

[Weedpacket]

By not using ereg, for a start (which will be freighted out to PECL sometime in
PHP 6), and especially by not using a regex engine when one isn't needed.

$search = array("(, ]", "'", "\n");
$contents[$i] = preg_replace("/var sym.*= \[. /", "", $contents[$i]);
$contents[$i] = str_replace($search, "", $contents[$i]);

or

$search = array("(, ]"=>"", "'"=>"", "\n"=>"");
$contents[$i] = preg_replace("/var sym.*= \[. ", "", $contents[$i]);
$contents[$i] = strtr($contents[$i], $search);

The latter would likely be a bit faster.

[scrupul0us]

totally blew my code apart:

heres a better view of what im doing:

	$handle = 'feed.txt';

$contents = explode(";", $handle);

#BUILD PHP ARRAYS
for($i=0; $i <= 3; $i++)
{
	$contents[$i] = ereg_replace("(var sym).*(= \[ )","",$contents[$i]);
	$contents[$i] = ereg_replace("(, \])","",$contents[$i]);
	$contents[$i] = ereg_replace("'","",$contents[$i]);
	$contents[$i] = ereg_replace("\n","",$contents[$i]);

	switch ($i) 
	{
		case 0:
		$url  = explode(",",$contents[$i]);
		break;
		case 1:
		$name = explode(",",$contents[$i]);
		break;
		case 2:
		$date = explode(",",$contents[$i]);
		break;
		case 3:
		$risk = explode(",",$contents[$i]);
		break;
	}
}

theres other error checking and what not but i trimmed it down to just show the processing

heres an example of feed.txt

var symLINK = [ 'backdoor.bifrose.i.html','w32.rinbot.a.html', ];
var symNAME = [ 'Backdoor.Bifrose.I','W32.Rinbot.A', ];
var symDATE = [ '02-18-07','02-16-07', ];
var symRISK = [ 1,2, ];

when i try ur two method weed i get a whole ton of errors

in the end i have 4 arrays that contain the cleaned values

[scrupul0us]

got it:

$search = array(", ]","'", "\n"); 
$contents[$i] = preg_replace("#(var sym).*(= \[.)#","", $contents[$i]); 
$contents[$i] = str_replace($search,"", $contents[$i]);

thanks for your help!

[Weedpacket]

Incidentally, preg_replace and str_replace can both take and return arrays of strings.

For the second part of your loop, see here.

Love to know what those error messages were (I note a typo in some of my code, but it's correct elsewhere).

But if that's what you want to do then:

$contents = explode(";", $handle);
foreach($contents as $i=>$content)
{
	preg_match("/(?<=\[ ).*(?=, \])/", $content, $matches);
	$contents[$i] = str_replace("'","",$matches[0]);
}
list($url, $name, $date, $risk) = $contents;
$url = explode(',', $url);
$name = explode(',', $name);
$date = explode(',', $date);
$risk = explode(',', $risk);