Parsing preg_replace

Confessions

This script below replaces

with
$text = "
"

echo preg_replace('/[QUOTE - [^]]*]/i', '
', $text);

Could someone explain to me how the bolded part works? I've seen similar expressions used for URL rewriting, but I've never found an extensive and detailed guide about how to use them.

Now if I wanted to remove this (from a large text file):
<dir name="move">
    <int name="speed" value="20"/>
    </dir>
How would I do it with preg_replace?

Confessions

To be clearer:

<dir name="move">
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
</dir>

The XXXXXXX part is random, and contains both < > " and / symbols in it.

laserlight

Confessions wrote:
Could someone explain to me how the bolded part works?

It basically matches '[QUOTE - ' followed by zero or more characters that are not ']', followed by a ']'. The matching is case insensitive.

Confessions wrote:
I've seen similar expressions used for URL rewriting, but I've never found an extensive and detailed guide about how to use them.

Read the PHP manual on Regular Expressions (Perl-Compatible). In particular, read the sections on possible modifiers in regex patterns and PCRE regex syntax.

Confessions wrote:
Now if I wanted to remove this (from a large text file):

<dir name="move">
<int name="speed" value="20"/>
</dir>

How would I do it with preg_replace?

If you want to remove that exact text rather than text that follows some pattern which that text is an example of, then use [man]str_replace/man instead.

bradgrafelman

laserlight;10931468 wrote:
Read the PHP manual on Regular Expressions (Perl-Compatible). In particular, read the sections on possible modifiers in regex patterns and PCRE regex syntax.

Just thought I'd add that Regular-Expressions.info is another great website for learning about the intricacies (or even the basics) of regular expressions.

Confessions

Thanks for the help guys, much appreciated as always. Last question:

preg_replace('/<tag>[^{£]+<\/tag>/',} 'removed', $text);

This basically replaces anything between these two tags (except for £) with "removed".

The problem is that I actually want to strip the matches out of the text, or remove everything else in $text except for the matches (the tags and whatever is between them). Is there some way to assign the matched series of strings to a variable, or use a syntax that says everything except for <tag>[^£]+<\/tag> ?

Weedpacket

It replaces everything between those two tags unless there is a £ in it somewhere.