""/'' or regex bug

[Duke555]

i have a bug in my code (below) and i cannot work out how to get rid of it.

when i test the code (by uncommenting one of '$sentence = ...') every word that begins with a '$' disappears and 'ay' gets added to where the word is supposed to be. when i change "" to '' all the problems go away. could someone explain to me why this is the case and what is causing it?

 

 

thank you very much

=========================================

<?php

//echo "Word provided by the user is: ".$_POST['word']."<br>";

 

$sentence = $_POST['word'];

/*$sentence = "@#%^##Hello World ?##World ?earner earner earner,? learner $$$learner";*/

/*

$sentence = "@#%^##Hello World $world ?##World ?earner earner earner,? world $world";*/

$sentence = strtolower($sentence);

 

 

//echo "converted to lower case: ".$sentence."<br>";

 

$cleaned_sentence = clean_string($sentence);

 

echo $cleaned_sentence."<br>";

 

$translated = translate($cleaned_sentence);

 

echo "The translated word/sentence into Pig Latin is: ".$translated."<br>";

 

/************************************************** **************************/

 

function clean_string($sentence_to_be_cleaned) {

$bad_characters = "[^a-zA-Z]";

$new_sentence = ereg_replace($bad_characters, ' ', $sentence_to_be_cleaned);

return $new_sentence;

}

 

function translate($string_to_translate)

{

// separating a sentence passed into individual words to translate into Pig Latin

// echo "string passed to translate() is: ".$string_to_translate."<br>";

 

$string = explode(' ', $string_to_translate);

 

// this regex will be used to check if the first letter is vowel or not

$reg_expression = '(a|e|i|o|u)';

 

// go through the string passed by INPUT word by WORD

foreach($string as $key=>$word)

{

//if 1st letter of a word is a vowel

if(check_regex($reg_expression, substr($word,0,1)) == TRUE)

{

// concatenate pig latin suffix and a given word to a total string which is going to be returned by the func. in the end

$total_string = $total_string.$word.'\'yay ';

}

// if a character is a ' ' (space) which occurs when any of the @#$? were replaced clean_string() then get rid of it

else if($word == ' ')

{

$word = '';

}

// else - 1st letter is a consonant

else

{

// find, replace the 1st consonant and then concatenate to a string which is going to be returned by

// the function

$consonant = substr($word,0,1);

$temp_string = substr_replace($word, "", 0, 1);

echo $temp_string."---- ";

// concatenate pig latin suffix and a given word to a total string which is going to be returned by the func. in the end

$total_string = $total_string.$temp_string.$consonant."ay"." ";

 

 

}

}

return $total_string;

}

 

function check_regex($myregex, $mystring) {

if (ereg($myregex, $mystring)) {

return TRUE;

}

else {

return FALSE;

}

}

?>

[Ken2k7]

What line(s) am I supposed to look at?

[xtopolis]

Uhh.. referring to the only thing that looks like a question... there is a difference between literal and quoted strings.

 

http://us.php.net/language.types.string

 

Long story short, values inside " " are interpreted, while values inside ' ' are taken literally.

[Duke555]

below are the lines where the bug is likely to be:

 

when uncommented:

/*$sentence = "@#%^##Hello World ?##World ?earner earner earner,? learner $$$learner";*/

/*

$sentence = "@#%^##Hello World $world ?##World ?earner earner earner,? world $world";*/

 

function clean_string($sentence_to_be_cleaned) {

$bad_characters = "[^a-zA-Z]";

$new_sentence = ereg_replace($bad_characters, ' ', $sentence_to_be_cleaned);

return $new_sentence;

}

[MadTechie]

thats because $ needs to be escaped

$eg = "\$test";

 

or just used single quotes

 

$eg = '$test';