preg_replace problem (trying to bring out a variable)

[cowcow]

$variable["new"]="hi";
$variable["cow"]="wow";
$string="nice to meet you [phpfile=new]";
$pattern='/\[phpfile=(\w+)\]/i';
$replace=$variable["$1"];
preg_replace($pattern,$replace,$string);

As you can see here I am trying to replace:

[phpfile=new]

with:

hi (from variable $variable["new"])

but the server says $1 is not registered.

any help is appreciated, thx.. =p

[bradgrafelman]

The $1 reference is only available within the preg_replace() context - you can't just store it as text inside another variable and expect preg_replace() to parse it correctly.

Try something like this:

$variable['new'] = 'hi';
$variable['cow'] = 'wow';

$string = 'this is a [phpfile=new]. [phpfile=cow]!';
$string = preg_replace('/\[phpfile=(\w+)\]/ie', '$variable["$1"]', $string);

If you'll notice, I'm using the 'e' modifier on the regexp. What this does is makes PHP treat the replacement string (the 2nd parameter of the preg_replace() function) as PHP code. So instead of literally replaceing it with $variable["$1"], it a) replaces $1 with the first matched subset of the pattern, and b) parses the string $variable["new"] as PHP code, which obviously evaluates to the string "hi" in your example.

[cowcow]

thankyou for your help, but it still gives me the same error as before. it wont register/initialize..

[bradgrafelman]

The code above works fine... paste the code you're using in your script.

[cowcow]

ahhhhhhh... sry mistake on my part.. in one of my code i mis-wrote the variable name... thx it works =p

[bradgrafelman]

Don't forget to mark this thread resolved.