Question

I’d like to replace all of the php short tags to full blown ones.

Example source text:

<a href="<?=$baseurl?>random/<?php echo $offset+$per_page; ?>" class="arrows right" <?php echo $displayright; ?>></a>

Expected final result:

<a href="<?php echo $baseurl; ?>random/<?php echo $offset+$per_page; ?>" class="arrows right" <?php echo $displayright; ?>></a>

I got as far as this:

Find what: <?=(.*)?>

Replace with: <?php echo \1; ?>

But the result is:

<a href="<?php echo $baseurl?>random/<?php echo $offset+$per_page; ?>" class="arrows right" <?php echo $displayright; ; ?>></a>

So it doesn’t really work when there are multiple php opening and closing tags on one line.

How do I fix this? Thanks!

Answer 1

Yes, because the * operator is greedy and will try to match everything up to the final ?. You can fix this by matching everything except the ? in the closing tag:

Find what: <?=([^?]*)?>

Replace with: <?php echo \1; ?>