Question

I have the below simple replace working

<?php
$mydata= '15-2003';
$pattern = '/[-]/';
$replacement = ' ';
echo preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $mydata);
?>

Which outputs 15 2003

However when I put it in my foreach loop it doesn’t seem to work?

I have this

<?php foreach ($tests as $test): ?>
<tr>
<?php
$mydata= htmlout($test['f']);
$pattern = '/[-]/';
$replacement = '';
echo preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $mydata);
?>
<?php endforeach; ?>

Which outputs 15-2003
Where am I going wrong here?

htmlout is the below custom function.

<?php
function html($text)
{
return htmlspecialchars($text, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
}
function htmlout($text)
{
echo html($text);
}

When I do var_dump($mydata);
I get NULL

Answer 1

This doesn’t work as intended because htmlout() echoes the value instead of returning it.

Consider replacing

$mydata= htmlout($test['f']);

with

$mydata= html($test['f']);

What happends in your code is that it simply prints out the original string, returns NULL to $mydata and then you echo a NULL which doesn’t show anything.