Question

I have a string: “Blah blah blah “blah” blah blah”, and I need to replace quotes on this string to «Blah blah blah «blah» blah blah»

I was trying to use this script:

$m=preg_replace('/([^\s>])\\\"/s',"$1»",$m);
$m=preg_replace('/\\\"([^\s])/s',"«$1",$m);

But when the string beginning from the space, i have something like that:

 »Some text» Some text Some text

How can I do this?

Answer 1

The most direct approach might be to use lookarounds to detect it the quote is directly before a word or directly after.

$m = preg_replace('/"(?=\w)/', '«', $m);
$m = preg_replace('/(?<=\w)"/', '»', $m);

This will work well on your example, but may be too simplistic. You might want to go further and look for a word charactor or punctuation so “blah blah.” will match as well. That would make the second example something like this: /(?<=[\w,.?!\)])"/