>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Manuel Pérez López [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 2:06 PM
>> To: php-general@lists.php.net
>> Subject: [PHP] looking a regular expresion
>>
>> Hello:
>>
>> I need to include a pair of negations with two complete word into a
>> regular expresion for preg_replace. How to do this?
>> I want to replace "I want to be a SUN and a SIR" with "FRIKI FRIKI
>> FRIKI FRIKI FRIKI SUN FRIKI FRIKI SIR"
>>
>> ie. the words are: SUN and SIR. And the replacement word is: FRIKI
>>
>> $st = preg_replace ("\b([^S][^U][^N])|([^S][^I][^R]\b)", "FRIKI",$st);
>>
>> This does not match
>>
>> Anyone hep me?
>>
>> Thanks
>
>Man... this is really irritating the heck out of me. I have recently been
>learning regular expressions, and >thought I was "fresh" enough to fix this
>with new eyes. However, I've been running into all kinds of trouble, >and I
>now impatiently anticipate an expert's answer, much the same as you. :)
>
>It's interesting to me that ``$st = preg_replace("(SUN)", "FRIKI", $st);``
>replaces the word "SUN" with the >word "FRIKI", but ``$st =
>preg_replace("(^SUN)", "FRIKI", $st);`` does the same thing (when it should be
>>replacing everything BUT the word "SUN").
>
>Annoying behavior. Is this particular to PHP's regular expression engine? I
>should try this in VB.NET and see >what the results are, as that's what I'm
>used to playing with (for the time being).
Okay, I think I figured it out!
$st = "SUN ASDF SIR BLAH SIR SIR SUN";
$st = preg_replace ("/(?!\b(SUN|SIR)\b)\b\w+\b/", "FRIKI", $st);
echo $st;
It involves a "lookaround," so I'm not sure how efficient it is-but it works!
Man, that's a load off my mind. It's not as simple as it would have seemed at
first... but now that I have a look at the finished regex string, it makes
sense.
"If there's not a word boundary followed by either SIR or SUN followed by
another word boundary, start over. Now, if there's a word boundary followed by
1 or more word characters followed by another word boundary, replace that with
FRIKI."
Hope this helps!!
Todd Boyd
Web Programmer
