Question

I need help creating a regular expression

blah blah blah blah <?= __l(array('key'=>'SOMEVALUE','default'=>'string string string')) ?>blah blah

I want to be able to strip the ‘SOMEVALUE’ and the ‘string string string’

Thanks
In advance

====== ‘This is what I have’ ========

$subject = "Blah blah ja ja blah blah jank junk jonk <?= __l(array('key'=>'KEYKEYKEY','default'=>'I am a monkey sigh\'s')) ?> ldjlsakfdj as;dfj as;flkj a fsd  ljaasfd <?= __l(array('key'=>'KEYKEYKEY','default'=>'I am a monkey sigh\'s')) ?>  ";
$pattern = '#\_\_l\(array\(\'key\'=>\'(.*)\',\'default\'=>\'(.*)\'\)\)#';



if (preg_match_all($pattern, $subject)) {
print "A match was found.";
} else {
print "A match was not found.";
}

print '<br />';

preg_match_all($pattern, $subject, $matches);

echo '<pre>';
print_r($matches);
echo '</pre>'

Answer 1

Your regex is a bit too complicated, try something like this:

$regex = "/'key'=>'[^']+','default'=>'[^']+'/";
$string = preg_replace( $regex, "'key'=>'','default'=>''", $string);

The regex is:

'key'=>'        - Match this literally
[^']+           - Match anything that's not a single quote, one or more times
','default'=>'  - Match this literally
[^']+           - Match anything that's not a single quote, one or more times
'               - Match this literally

And the replacement is simply the 2nd parameter to preg_replace().