Question

I’m working on a script for looping thru PHP files and renaming function calls when necessary. This selection needs to be done by the following rules:

• NO function declaration //function test() {
• NO static functions //SomeClass::staticMethod()
• NO class functions // $class->method()
• ONLY function calls // myFunction()

Currently I have the following regex:

preg_replace_callback("/((?<=function\s|\:\:|->)[a-z][a-zA-Z0-9\_]+)\(.*\)/i", 'test', $content);

• Function names are mostly written in camelBack notation.
• Sometimes function names contains a underscore.

This is a positive look behind assertion: it gives all the given rules classified by NO 🙂

So I have to change it in the negative way but that is my problem. When I try, it’s not working as proposed.

EDIT

When i try a negative look behind assertion

'?<!' instead of '?<='

With the example above it gives the following output:

• est() (missing first)
• taticMethod() (missing first)
• ethod() (missing first)
• myFunction() (correct)

It drops the first letter of the functions I don’t wanna match. Is there anyone who knows how to do the trick?

Answer 1

You seem to have misplaced a parenthesis. Your current regex seems to drop the first character for camelcase functions. This seems to work better (tested with a preg_match_all):

preg_match_all("/(?<=function\s|\:\:|->)([a-z][a-zA-Z0-9\_]+)\(.*\)/i", $file, $matches);

On a side note, you’re use of preg_replace_callback is incorrect, since it’s 2nd argument should be a callable

EDIT

As per PO’s comment, my first try was dumb 🙂

The main problem with your expression is that if it starts with :: it will drop out this part, but the first letter of the method name will match your first subexpression and the rest of it will match as a method name.

I tried another approch with character groups, let me know how it works out for you:

preg_match_all('/[^:a-z]([a-z]+[a-zA-Z0-9\_]+)\(.*\)[^\s{]/i', $file, $matches);