Question

I’m trying to find some certain blocks in my data file and replace something inside of them. After that put the whole thing (with replaced data) into a new file. My code at the moment looks like this:

$content = file_get_contents('file.ext', true);

//find certain pattern blocks first
preg_match_all('/regexp/su', $content, $matches);

foreach ($matches[0] as $match) {
  //replace data inside of those blocks
  preg_replace('/regexp2/su', 'replacement', $match);
}

file_put_contents('new_file.ext', return_whole_thing?);

Now the problem is I don’t know how to return_whole_thing. Basically, file.ext and new_file.ext are almost the same except of the replaced data.
Any suggestion what should be on place of return_whole_thing?

Thank you!

Answer 1

It’s probably best to strengthen your regular expression to find a subpattern within the original pattern. That way you can just call preg_replace() and be done with it.

$new_file_contents = preg_replace('/regular(Exp)/', 'replacement', $content);

This can be done with “( )” within the regular expression. A quick google search for “regular expression subpatterns” resulted in this.