Question

i have 2 text string in php and i want to change them to html tags

first :

*.some text
* some text

and second :

#.sometext
# sometext

i want to change the first string that start with '*.' or '* ' to <li> and end with '\r' or '\n' to </li>

and i want to change the second string that start with '#.' or '# ' to <ol> and end with '\r' or '\n' to </ol>

I wrote this regex code but not work:

$regex1 = "#([*.])(.*)([\n])#e";
$text = preg_replace($regex1,"('<li>$2</li>')",$text);

$regex2 = "#([#.])(.*)([\n])#e";
$text = preg_replace($regex2,"('<ol>$2</ol>')",$text);

what should i do?

thanks a lot

Answer 1

I recommend quite a few changes to your code, which I’ll explain below.

First the code:

<?php
$text = "
first :

*.some text
* some text

and second :

#.sometext
# sometext
";

$regex1 = "#\*(.| )(.*?)\n#";
$text = preg_replace($regex1,"<li>$2</li>\n",$text);

$regex2 = "#\#(.| )(.*?)\n#";
$text = preg_replace($regex2,"<ol>$2</ol>\n",$text);

echo $text;

and the output

first :

<li>some text</li>
<li>some text</li>

and second :

<ol>sometext</ol>
<ol>sometext</ol>

Changes:

• You don’t need to use the e modifier in the regex
• In order to match *. and *, just specify * (escaped to \*, and an OR condition for . (escaped to \.) and .
• Use non-greedy version of .*, i.e. .*? so you only eat the least possible text.

PS: This probably isn’t what you wanted (ol has this structure: <ol><li>...</li><li>...</li></ol>, but I wrote the code to your question’s spec. You should be able to modify this.