Replace Unless...

[The Little Guy]

Is there a way to say:

 

replace "a" unless it is between "b" and "c"?

[.josh]

yes, with lookaround

[The Little Guy]

What is a look around, and how would I use it?

[effigy]

http://www.regular-expressions.info/lookaround.html

[The Little Guy]

Thanks for the link, Ill look at it!

[The Little Guy]

WOW, I'm totally confused.

 

Here is my array of "finds"

$find = array(
'~(\s[a-z].*?=)~',				// Highlight the attributes
'~(<\!--.*?-->)~s',			// Hightlight comments
'~("[a-zA-Z0-9\/].*?")~',	// Highlight the values
'~(<[a-z].*?>)~',				// Highlight the beginning of the opening tag
'~(</[a-z].*?>)~',				// Highlight the closing tag
'~(&.*?~',					// Stylize HTML entities
);

 

For the values line, I place this in front of what I have:

(?!=<\!--)

 

So then I would have this:

~(?!=<\!--)("[a-zA-Z0-9\/].*?"~

 

Is that how it is done? If so, It isn't doing anything, as you can see from this result here (first four lines should be commented out): http://phpsnips.com/test.php

[effigy]

?! means does not follow.

?= means follows.

?!=, what you have, means does not follow, then a literal =.

[The Little Guy]

I think that is what I want...

 

What I am hopping, is for it to say "don't apply the formatting if it is within a HTML comment"

[MadTechie]

example

$data = "bac abc cab";
$data = preg_replace('/(?<!b)a(?!c)/sm', 'X', $data );

echo $data; //bac Xbc cXb