Question

I have a string Action – [N]ew, [U]pdate, or [D]elete : N that I need to replace with “Action – [N]ew, [U]pdate, or [D]elete : U” somhow by using preg_replace I can’t get it working. It remains the same.

My code looks like this

$action = Action - '[N]ew, [U]pdate, or [D]elete : U';
$line = preg_replace("/(Action - [N]ew, [U]pdate, or [D]elete : N)/",$action,$line);

Answer 1

[ and ] are special characters in regular expressions. You’ll have to escape them if you want to match them:

"/(Action - \[N\]ew, \[U\]pdate, or \[D\]elete : N)/"

Without being escaped, and expression within [ and ] will match one of every character within them. So in your original case, "[N]ew" was matching "New". If it had been "[NP]ew", it would have matched "New" or "Pew".