Question

Is it possible to add a “filter” with words that IF found, the regex does not split the words? – Wow i hope my english makes sense 🙂

Let me illustrated..

This is my current regex to split strings such as: TheStringIsSItTING Together

$taglist=preg_replace('/([a-z])([A-Z])/','$1 $2', $taglist);

With the example string the regex produces: The String Is SIt TING

I would like to have a filter, where i could put in SItTING so that the regex does not split that word up.

Please let me know if my explanation was not good enough, i am battling with my english still 🙂

Oh, and thanks for a GREAT community!!

Answer 1

You can’t really check if you’re in the middle of a word without manually breaking apart that word with lookaround assertions as @stema has done. To have a list of exclusions, you’d have to do it a bit more programmatically.

$taglist = 'TheStringIsNowCurrentlySItTING';
$excludeList = array(
    'SItTING',
    'StringIs',
);

$exclusions = implode('|', $excludeList);
$tagArr = preg_split("/($exclusions)/", $taglist, -1, PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
foreach ($tagArr as &$token) {
    if (!in_array($token, $excludeList)) {
        $token = preg_replace('/([a-z])([A-Z])/', '$1 $2', $token);
    }
}
$taglist = implode(' ', $tagArr);

1. Break it apart on your excluded terms.
2. Put spaces only in the terms that aren’t excluded.
3. Glue everything back together with spaces.