Question

I have this function in my website.

function autolink($content) {
   $pattern = "/>>[0-9]/i" ;
   $replacement = "<a href=\"#$0\">>>$0</a>";
   return preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $content, -1);

This is for making certain characters into a clickable hyperlink.

For example, (on a thread) when a user inputs ‘>>4’ to denote to the another reply number 4, the function can be useful.

But it’s not working. the characters are not converted into a hyperlink. They just remain as plain text. Not clickable.

Could someone tell me what is wrong with the function?

Answer 1

So the objective is to convert:

This is a reference to the >>4 reply

…into:

This is a reference to the <a href="#4">&gt;&gt;4</a> reply

…where “>” is the HTML UTF-8 equivalent of “>”. (remember, you don’t want to create HTML issues)

The problems: (1) you forgot to escape the quotes in the replacement (2) since you want to isolate the number, you need to use parentheses to create a sub-pattern for later reference.

Once you do this, you arrive at:

function autolink($contents) {
    return preg_replace( "/>>([0-9])/i",
                         "<a href=\"#$1\">&gt;&gt;$1</a>",
                         $contents,
                         -1
                       );
}

Good luck