ghostdog74

how are you using it? show your code.

have you measured how many behind-the-scene "processes" the regexp engine creates when parsing regexp? if you were to go behind the scene, what its doing is similar. that's part of it. Good code, should also be maintainable and readable. I am sure you don't code your program in binary or numbers do you? Same logic, with too much symbols , it makes code unreadable. So its even better if i come and present a one line solution that crams everything together?? A 15 lines of code program, properly indented, with understandable english words, and works just as fast as regexp sure beats one that's uncomprehensible and less lines of code. yes indeed what i meant. however, have you conducted experiments to see whether regexp are indeed better in terms of speed than native string functions to solve problems? This is where we clearly differ. You equate 'understandability' as being fine. I equate elegantly fast and efficient bug-free code as being fine. So in the end, we can agree to disagree. yes indeed. Its all up to the OP to consider and use the solutions. Its really no point continuing to argue here.

work better? in what ways? anyway, i am not arguing with you on code performance. I am just merely showing OP there are more simpler ways to do things than spending time constructing complex regular expressions, which he seems to have a headache on, since needs to post for help. Good code should be immediately understandable to someone who might not be the original coder. You have said it, there are many ways to do things and one of them is using less regexp. speed & efficiency is very subjective, it depends on how well the coder understands his concepts. A not well written regexp can be slow too. its only another example of getting the last part. further processing then can be done, like split and array_unique i suggested. so do you think OP's problem can't be solved without regexp? so what if there's additional code? As long as its understandable, its fine.

$text='<iframe src ="/default.asp" width="100%"> </iframe><Iframe longdesc="Hello" src="a.php"></iframe><iframe src="b.php" longdesc="Hi">Hello world</iframe>'; $iframes = split("</iframe>",$text); foreach( $iframes as $k=>$v){ if ( strpos($v,"<Iframe longdesc") !==FALSE){ echo "Found"; } }

$string = "{INCLUDE:page.php}"; if ( stripos($string,"{INCLUDE" ) !==FALSE ){ $result=split(":|}",$string); echo $result[1]; }

do it step by step, ie KISS foreach($words_to_bold as $k){ echo str_replace( .....); }

This tends to be a lot of work for a simple task that is best done using Darkwater's solution. Keeping the code small with the least amount of steps is most recommended. i don't agree with you. yes it looks like its a lot of work, but these string/array methods are so common that one looking at the code knows what's going on what its doing. its true regex is short and sharp but when it comes to troubleshooting, especially for those who is going to read your code with lots of regex, he's going to have a hard time. anyway, the simplest solution might be using parse_url, instead of wasting time constructing regex.

you can use zlib instead.

$string = "http://example.com/nate/joe/joe/tom/"; $a = explode("//",$string) ; $b = explode("/",$a[1]); $removed = implode("/",array_unique($b)) ; echo $a[0]."//$removed";