[RESOLVED] function for finding hidden character

[OwenTheSamoan]

Is there a function to find hidden characters. Let's suppose I want to find the word 'yahoo' that is hidden in text like this -- xxxyaxxhoxxoxx. Is it possible to filter words like this?

Thanks in advance,
Owen The Samoan

[laserlight]

Yes, e.g., by using regular expressions. Read up on Regular Expression Functions (Perl-Compatible).

[OwenTheSamoan]

I'll give it a try, thanks!

[dagon]

strpos() is better for the simple cases

[OwenTheSamoan]

I've tried strpos() preg_split() preg_grep() but I'm not getting exactly what I want. Perhaps I need to use another example.

$string = "Yellow always has been a good color for me";

in the string the word "yahoo" is hidden. What function would I use to detect this hidden word in the string?

Thanks for everyone's help.

[dagon]

thats a whole other kettle of fish, can you do a loop and check for the letters y,a,h,o,o ?

[laserlight]

Read the PHP Manual, I linked to it in my post. A hard coded example would be:

<?php
$pattern = '/.*y.*a.*h.*o.*o.*/i';
$subject = 'Yellow always has been a good color for me';
if (preg_match($pattern, $subject)) {
    echo 'Word found.';
} else {
    echo 'Word not found.';
}
?>

thats a whole other kettle of fish

It is precisely what was asked for in the original post, and is why strpos() is not the right tool for the job here.

[OwenTheSamoan]

Works perfectly! Thank you very much!

[dagon]

laserlight wrote:

It is precisely what was asked for in the original post, and is why strpos() is not the right tool for the job here.

well spank me i'm bad.

[OwenTheSamoan]

One last question concerning this. Is it possible to look for more than one combination of hidden words at one time. I tried putting it into an array like this, but kept getting errors. I was looking for the hidden words yahoo and aol

$pattern = array('/.y.a.h.o.o./', '/.a.o.l./');

Thanks again!

[laserlight]

Yes, by using | (or).

[OwenTheSamoan]

I don't want to seem stupid, but I cannot get this to work using |(or) I'm doing something like this $pattern = '/.y.a.h.o.o./i' or '/.a.o.l./i'

Where am I going wrong?

[Weedpacket]

In the pattern.

/(y.*a.*h.*o.*o)|(a.*o.*l)/i