Remove Semi-Colons

[The Little Guy]

Would the best or a possible way to remove 2+ semi-colons in a string be like this?

 

$string = "123;12;12;12;23;;;;142;321;1;132;212;;322";
$replace = ";";

$find = preg_replace("~;{2+}~",$replace,$string);

[effigy]

~;{2,}~

[DarkWater]

I don't think that regex will work.

 

/({2,}/

That one does.

 

Edit:  Someone beat me to it.

[sasa]

<?php
$string = "123;12;12;12;23;;;;142;321;1;132;212;;322";
$replace = "";
$find = preg_replace("~(?<=;~",$replace,$string);
?>

[corbin]

sasa why a backreference?  Wouldn't the [;]{2,} way be faster?

[effigy]

That's a lookaround (positive lookbehind), and, although I haven't ran any benchmarks, I don't think it's the best approach. ;{2, } is straightforward and--I'm guessing--more efficient.

 

P.S. Don't use useless character classes such as [;].

[corbin]

lookaround?  Oh.

 

(I suck at regexp...  Decent at the basics, then I know nothing.)

 

 

Ah yeah, I guess [;] is entirely pointless x.x.