Question

OK I’m stuck again, this time it’s a problem with the regex… Was searching google, was searching SO, but there wasn’t a post that made me happy… So to make a long story short:

• §text = Database entry string -> could be everything

• $text gets parsed and the regex should replace everything between 2 * with:

  [bla].$matchedtext.[blub]

So I’ve tried to find the right regex for that and that’s what I came up with:

$text= preg_replace('~(/\*([^\"]*?)\*/)~', "$1<b>$2</b>", $text);

And the 2 * per match should disappear as well :/…

Obviously it doesn’t work, elsewhise I wouldn’t post 😀 -> Any ideas?

Answer 1

This should probably do it:

preg_replace('/\*([^"*]*)\*/', '<b>\1</b>', $text);

A few comments on your earlier regular expression:

[^\"]*?

The non-greedy * is not necessary; when you’re looking at a negative character set, simply add the ‘*’ inside the character set. Also, the double quote doesn’t need escaping.

[^"*]*

You only need memory groups for things you wish to remember; in your case, you don’t want to know that you matched a beginning and ending asterisk. So you can do your whole matching with just one memory group.