Question

I need to modify HTML markup such that a matched word or phrase gets hightlighted, but that phrase may contain markup. For example:

This formatted text :

This <b>f<i>or</i>mat</b>ted text

I’d want to be able to find “This formatted” and wrap it in <style="color:lightblue" </span> tags

So the above would become:

 <span  style="color:yellow">This <b>f<i>or</i>mat</b>ted</span> text

I’m using PHP on linux.

Thanks

EDIT:
I’m not looking to replace tag but match text that has tags within it. Basically matching a string that may be spaced out with arbitrary tags of any type or length.
Please ignore my ancient html tags, they were just easier to type.

Answer 1

If I’m understanding the question correctly, you could use preg_match to find the specified string, then replace it with a version surrounded by your tag.