Question

Alright, so this is linked to a previous question I had. I am very new to PHP in general, and simply only need it to fix something someone else did to work for a forum of mine.

This is what I currently have:

// Alter post output to create links to user profiles
$post->message = preg_replace(
   '/@ *('.preg_quote($speak['username'], '/').')[:,.]? */i',
'[url=\''.PAGE_URL.RELATIVE_WBB_DIR.'/index.php?'
. 'page=User&userID='.$speak['toID'].'\']@'.$ speak['username'].':[/url]',
                              $post->message);

This should change:

@JamesNorris, @JamesNorris: @JamesNorris

to user profile links, and it does. The only problem is that the other change it makes is this:

@JamesNorris:@JamesNorris:@JamesNorris:

That is the output from that line given before.
Apparently it is removing the ‘,’ and whitespace, and placing a ‘:’.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this problem?

Answer 1

You can capture the ,:. as its own group and reference that in the replacement:

('preg_quote(...)')([:,. ])? */i',
   '[url...'.$speak['username'].'\2[/url]'

The \2 is whatever was captured in the second group (colon, comma, period, space). It’s \2 because you already have another capture group for the username (that you don’t use).