Question

My current php sentence sanitizer function:

function sanitize_sentence($string) {
    $pats = array(
    '/([.!?]\s{2}),/',      # Abc.  ,Def
    '/\.+(,)/',             # ......,
    '/(!)!+/',              # abc!!!!!!!!
    '/\s+(,)/',             # abc   , def
    '/([a-zA-Z])\1\1/');    # greeeeeeen
    $fixed = preg_replace($pats,'$1',$string);
    $fixed = preg_replace('/,(?!\s)/',', ',$fixed);
    return $fixed;
}

echo sanitize_sentence('hello!!!!!!there should be a space after the exclamation mark.right???????yes.right,');

The result should be:

hello! there should be a space after the exclamation mark. right? yes. right.

So, what’s still missing is:

1. an extra space should be inserted after any !?,.if there is more text at the right.
2. if the last character is a comma (or any other character different than a-zA-Z0-9!?.), it should be replaced with a dot.
3. if the user writes more than one question mark, it should be converted to one (?????? = ?). That is working fine for me for exclamation marks, but somehow it’s not working for the others.

Any help will be highly appreciated!

Answer 1

Your requirements:

1. An extra space should be inserted after any !?,. if there is more text at the right.

   We can use another regex to do this replacement:

   $fixed = preg_replace( '/([!?,.])(\S)/', '$1 $2', $fixed); # spaces after punctuation, if it doesn't exist already
   

2. If the last character is a comma (or any other character different than a-zA-Z0-9!?.), it should be replaced with a dot.

   You can get this with a regex, anchored at the end of the text:

   $fixed = preg_replace( '/[^a-zA-Z0-9!?.]+$/', '.', $fixed); # end of string must end in period
   

3. If the user writes more than one question mark, it should be converted to one (?????? = ?). That is working fine for me for exclamation marks, but somehow it’s not working for the others.

   It’s not working because ? is a special character in regexes, you need to escape it. Replace the appropriate entry with this:

   '/(!|\?)\1+/',              # abc!!!!!!!!, abc?????????
   

And now, the output is:

hello! there should be a space after the exclamation mark. right? yes. right.