Question

i’m trying to decode strings between tow special tags with htmlspecialchars_decode and preg_replace, for example my original string is like this:

other strings...[link]<a href="http://example.com" target="_blank">example</a>[/link]other strings...

i need to convert everything between [link][/link] to html original code. tested this:

    $str = preg_replace("/[link](.*)[\/link]/eisU", "htmlspecialchars_decode('$1')", $str);                 

dosen’t worked! i searched google and SO too but was useless!

Answer 1

You have to escape the square brackets, otherwise [link] is interpreted a character set comprising the letters l, i, n, k.

You should use preg_quote() if you’re not sure about what to escape:

preg_replace('/' . preg_quote('[link]', '/') . '(.*?)' . preg_quote('[/link]', '/') . '/eisU', ...

This will do too:

/\[link\](.*)\[\/link\]/eisU