NYCPHP Meetup

[Fan, Wellington]

Maybe a combination of preg_split/preg_match would do it.


//// ALL UNTESTED CODE....

$pattern = "/title=\".+\"/U";

$text = 'Howdy! This is a long string with some <tag
title="howdy">pieces</tag> in it...';


// Unzip the big string into alternate pieces...
$texts_array = preg_split( $pattern, $text);
               preg_match( $pattern, $text, $titles_array);

// Now $titles_array is an array of the pieces that match $pattern,
// and $texts_array  is an array of everthing else.

// Do soemthing with the pieces of text...
function user_func(&$value, $key) { 
   $value = <DO SOMETHING>; 
} 
array_walk( $texts_array, 'user_func' ); // do something with the pieces...


// Zip it back up
for( $i = 0; $i < count($texts_array); $i++) {
	$newString .= $texts_array[$i] . $titles_array[$i];
}

///////////////////////////////////////////////

You'd need to check (or force) that the $text doesn't begin with a match to
$pattern.

Essentially, this depends on _match and _split to be converses (?) of each
other -- the string comes apart like teeth in a zipper, then you process all
the teeth on one side, then zip it back up.


Hope that helps...

--
Wellington


> -----Original Message-----
....
> I'm having a little personal struggle with replacing selected words 
> in a long article which is in HTML.  I want to search for words and 
> replace them with a link, but not if they are already inside a 
> title="" attribute of a tag.
....