Question

I have this regex with the preg_replace function on PHP :

$str=preg_replace(
    '#\b((Hello ).+)#',
    '<a class="lforum" href="$1">$1</a>',
    $str);

It checks all strings that start with Hello and are followed by any kind of chars (at least one char, with repetition).

So for example :

Hello Mark \\ is checked
HelloMark  \\ is not checked

The problem now is that also this string is checked :

Hello Mark Cordi

because white space is a char, anyway.

I don’t want this. Or, better, if the string is Hello Mark Cordi, it must replace only Hello Mark.

How can I do this? Thanks

EDIT Problem with newline

My actual function :

echo example(htmlentities($myString, ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8"));

function example($str) {
    $str=preg_replace(
        '#((Hello )[^ \n]+)#',
        '<a class="lforum" href="$1">$1</a>',
        $str);

    return nl2br($str);     
}

If $myString is :

Hello Mario
Ciao

(notice the newline, so at the end of Hello Mario there is a \n) the output is this :

<a class="lforum" href="Hello Mario<br />">Hello Mario<br /></a><br />Ciao

instead of :

<a class="lforum" href="Hello Mario">Hello Mario</a><br />Ciao

So it add that \n with $1 on replace, and it shouldnt 🙁

Answer 1

Use [^ ] (everything but a whitespace) instead of ..

[^abc] means “everything but a, b and c“. Here we use it with a single whitspace.

Edit (2):

This is working:

  $str=preg_replace(
        '#(Hello [^\s\n<]+)#',
        '<a class="lforum" href="$1">$1</a>',
        $str);

It is ok for strings like this: Mark<..., Mark\n..., Mark ... (replace ... with what you want).

[^\s\n<] means “everything but spaces (\s), newlines (\n), and <“.