Question

$remarks = preg_replace('/'.$searchText.'/i', '<span class="searchText">$0</span>', $remarks);

I use the line of code above to highlight the search text that has been entered by the user. It works 99% of the time except when the search string happens to contain a forward slash (/) character. When they do that, php returns a “unknown modifier” error. I’ve tried escaping the forward slash with a back slash character by adding this line of code ahead of the preg_replace line.

$searchText = str_replace('/', '\/', $searchText);

That doesn’t seem to help. How do I make this work?

Answer 1

That’s what preg_quote is for:

$searchText = preg_quote($searchText, '/');
preg_replace("/$searchText/i", ...)