Question

I have this code below which works ok ish.

$swearWords = file("blacklist.txt");
foreach ($swearWords as $naughty)
{
    $post = str_ireplace(rtrim($naughty), "<b><i>(oops)</i></b>", $post); 
}

The problem is with words that contain thee swear words..

for instant “Scunthorpe” has a bad word within it. this code changes it to S(oops)horpe.

Any ideas how i can fix this ? do I need to

Answer 1

You can replace your str_replace() with a preg_replace that ignores words that have leading and/or trailing letters, so a swear word is only replaced if its standing alone:

$post = "some Scunthorpe text";
$newpost = $post;
$swearWords = file("blacklist.txt");
foreach ($swearWords as $naughty)
{
    $naughty = preg_quote($naughty, '/');
    $newpost = preg_replace("/([^a-z]+{$naughty}[^a-z]*|[^a-z]+{$naughty}[^a-z]+)/i", "<b><i>(oops)</i></b>", $newpost); 
}
if ($newpost) $post = $newpost;
else echo "an error occured during regex replacement";

Note that it still allows swear words like “aCUNT”, “soFUCKINGstupid”, … i don’t know how you could even handle that.