Question

I am developing a PHP application which needs a regular expression to replace the @ mentions like twitter. Also the regular expression should satisfy the following needs.

1. if there is just @ and nothing before and after that then it should not be replaced.
2. @ in the emails should not be replaced. For eg. [e-mail] should not be replaced.
3. Only strings like @sam or @example should be replaced like <a href="http://twitter.com/sam">@sam</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/example">@example</a>

Please help. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Wow. I found the answer myself guys.

$tweet = preg_replace('/(^|[^a-z0-9_])@([a-z0-9_]+)/i', '$1<a href="http://twitter.com/$2">@$2</a>', $tweet);

Thanks for your help guys.