Question

I am not the best with RegEx… I have some PHP code:

$pattern = '/activeAds = \[(.*?)\]/si';
$modData = preg_replace($pattern,'TEST',$data);

So I have a JavaScript file, and it declares and array:

var activeAds = [];

I need this to populate the array with my string, or if the array already has a string inside it, i want to replace it with my string (in this case “TEST”).

Right now, my REGEX is replacing everything, including my start and end, i need to only replace whats between.

I’m left with:

var TEST;

TIA

Answer 1

You could capture what’s before and what’s after the part you want replacing:

$pattern = '/(activeAds = \[).*?(\])/si';

After capturing these parts, you can keep them and replace the part in the middle:

$modData = preg_replace($pattern, '\1TEST\2', $data);