[RESOLVED] replace words and number replacements

ungovernable

ok here's what i want to do

Here is an example text:

$text = "I have a dog. My dog's name is tobby. My dog is cool."

I would like to replace all words "dog" by "animal1", "animal2", etc....

The result i want is :

I have a animal1. My animal2's name is tobby. My animal3 is cool.

I already have the code to do the replacement

$blah = str_replace("dog", "animal", $text);

but i don't know how to number the replacements

could someone help me with a sample code?

thanks for your time

bradgrafelman

That's an interesting requirement... normally I don't spoon-feed code, but I don't think I've ever come across this type of situation so I thought I'd just have a go at it. Here's what I came up with:

$text = "I have a dog. My dog's name is tobby. My dog is cool.";

$text = preg_replace_callback(
		'/dog/i',
		create_function(
			'$matches',
			'$GLOBALS["num"] = (isset($GLOBALS["num"]) ? $GLOBALS["num"]+1 : 1); return "animal" . $GLOBALS["num"];'
		),
		$text
);

echo $num;

Only way I could think of doing it was to create a counter-variable in the global space... could cause a variable collision if you use $num in your code, in which case you'd have to pick a different name inside the create_function() code.

I'm sure sooner or later someone like Weedpacket will jump in with a more genius solution that doesn't have the limitations mine does... :p

NogDog

One way:

<?php
$text = "I have a dog. My dog's name is tobby. My dog is cool.";
$text = preg_replace_callback('/dog/', 'animal', $text);
echo $text;

function animal($matches)
{
   static $x = 1;
   return 'animal'.$x++;
}

bradgrafelman

sigh A static variable. Of course. Sometimes I hate myself for not jumping onboard PHP5 sooner and learning all of the advantages it has over PHP4.

ungovernable

thanks a lot for this quick and very helpful answer!!

it does exactly what i wanted 🙂

NogDog

bradgrafelman;10916210 wrote:
sigh A static variable. Of course. Sometimes I hate myself for not jumping onboard PHP5 sooner and learning all of the advantages it has over PHP4.

To the best of my knowledge, static variables within a user-defined function have always been around, at least in PHP4, anyway. Static class members are only in PHP5+, but this is different.

bradgrafelman

Oh, guess I was just ignorant in scoping altogether then :o