PHP: regular expressions & preg_replace()

justravis

thanks for reading my thread.

isnt ^ common regex notation?

keep getting this error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '^'

$goalsheet.=preg_replace("/^[0-9]+ Year Career Goal #[0-9]+: *$\", "/^<span class=hd2>[0-9]+ Year Career Goal #[0-9]+: *</span><br>$/", $goallist);

aside from the error, i think the regex is off, but i hav had a hard time finding a tutorial that explains how I can ignore text in the middle.

Here are some examples of what i'm trying to do:
"1 Year Goal #1: Web Developer" -> "1 Year Goal #1: Web Developer "
"10 Year Goal #2: IT Consultant" -> "10 Year Goal #2: IT Consultant "

suggestions?

laserlight

Your regular expression pattern is actually '/^[0-9]+ Year Career Goal #[0-9]+: *$\", "'. As such, the opening '/' has no matching end.

Based on your examples, I would write:

$goalsheet .= preg_replace('/^(\d+ Year Goal #\d+: .*)$/', '<span>\1</span><br>', $goallist);