[RESOLVED] preg_replace

OwenTheSamoan

I'm trying to make spelling corrections in a paragraph. One example of what I am doing is changing "im" to "I'm". I'm using preg_replace to do this. Within the code, I'm doing this "/ im /i", as opposed to this "/im/i", so that I do not end up changing words like slim to sl I'm. Sometimes this code works beautifully and at other times, sometimes at the beginning of a sentence it does not recognize im and does nothing. Any thoughts?

$text = preg_replace("/ im /i", " I'm ", $text);

garblar

im thinking this might be because you are looking for spaces around it, but at the start of a sentence it may sometimes be at the start of a new line, so it is not finding that first space.

OwenTheSamoan

That is exactly the problem. Anyway around this?

garblar

think you would need multiple preg_replaces for the different cases

ie:

$text = preg_replace("/ im /i", " I'm ", $text);
$text = preg_replace("/\nim /i", "\nI'm ", $text);

and any others you need

bradgrafelman

There's no need to have two separate calls to preg_replace():

$text = preg_replace('/(?<=\s|\A)im\b/i', 'I\'m', $text);

OwenTheSamoan

That worked perfectly. Thanks everyone. Is there a link I may go to so I can read and understand the additional code that was used?

Thanks.

laserlight

Is there a link I may go to so I can read and understand the additional code that was used?

Read the PHP manual on PCRE regex syntax.

bradgrafelman

Another great source for regexp's is Regular-Expressions.info.

Also, don't forget to mark this thread resolved.

OwenTheSamoan

Thank you very much!