Question

Hi I am creating a generator form to replace
some CSS code I have … it will find all the
class and id as well as dots, and place .class
in front of them …

now it’s only replacing the first match
I have set the limit to -1 … why it’s ignoring it??

html:

<form action="get_html.php" method="post" id="form">
    html:<textarea rows="50" cols="80" id="html_box" name="html" type="text" align="texttop"></textarea>
    <input id="button" type="submit" value="submit"></input>
</form>

get_html.php

<?php 
    $html= $_POST["html"]; 
    $string = (string)$html;
    $patterns = array();
    $patterns[0] = '/^[.]/';
    $patterns[1] = '/^[#]/';
    $patterns[2] = '/,/';
    $replacements = array();
    $replacements[0] = '.class .\1';
    $replacements[1] = '.class #\1';
    $replacements[2] = ', .class \1';
    $str= preg_replace($patterns,$replacements, $string, -1);
?>
<textarea rows="50" cols="80"><?php echo $str; ?></textarea>

Answer 1

Your first two regexes can only match at the start of the string (^ only matches at the start of each line if you use the /m modifier).

But those regexes probably wouldn’t do what you want them to do. Right now you’re looking for a dot or a hash, but only if they are the first character of the string/line (or any comma) and replace them with .class and themselves. The \1 is useless because you don’t have a capturing group in your regex.