[SOLVED] Preg Replace at start and end string

[sastro]

The string is "...multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Virtual currencies are digitized forms of money issued by... stripes gravitate towards online money laundering. strategies..."

How to replace "..." at begining and end of the string?

 

Thanks in advance

[.josh]

replace it with what?

[sastro]

with empty 

[.josh]

okay well if you're just wanting to remove 3 dots from the beginning and end of a string, you can do this:

 

$string = substr($string,3,-3);

 

or this:

 

$string = trim($string,'.');

 

 

[sastro]

I need preg_replace, because sometimes, the string not contain "..."

Thanks

[.josh]

You said in your OP that you wanted to replace "..." with nothing.  Now you're saying that "..." will change.

 

Okay, so here's the deal: I'm not psychic, nor is anybody else around here.  Rest assured, we are trying our hardest to fix that issue, but until then, if you want help, you are going to have to specifically mention what it is you're trying to do here. 

 

What will be at the beginning and end?

[sastro]

I'm sory for my bad english.

Here is my code :

<?php
$a=array(
'...multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Virtual currencies are digitized forms ... stripes gravitate towards online money laundering. strategies...',
'Google Bugs May Contribute to Lower AdSense Income... AdSense publishers can now adjust the sizes of fonts within the ad units...',
'...revenues, Carter set out to fine-tune his AdSense program to maximize his cash flow.'
);
foreach($a AS $v){
echo preg_replace('[^\.{3}$]','',$v).'<br>';
}
?>

 

But the result is

...multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Virtual currencies are digitized forms ... stripes gravitate towards online money laundering. strategies...
Google Bugs May Contribute to Lower AdSense Income... AdSense publishers can now adjust the sizes of fonts within the ad units...
...revenues, Carter set out to fine-tune his AdSense program to maximize his cash flow.

 

I need the result just like below

multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Virtual currencies are digitized forms ... stripes gravitate towards online money laundering. strategies
Google Bugs May Contribute to Lower AdSense Income... AdSense publishers can now adjust the sizes of fonts within the ad units
revenues, Carter set out to fine-tune his AdSense program to maximize his cash flow.

 

I hope you understand what i mean..

[nrg_alpha]

One solution could be:

 

$a=array(
'...multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Virtual currencies are digitized forms ... stripes gravitate towards online money laundering. strategies...',
'Google Bugs May Contribute to Lower AdSense Income... AdSense publishers can now adjust the sizes of fonts within the ad units...',
'...revenues, Carter set out to fine-tune his AdSense program to maximize his cash flow.'
);

foreach($a as &$val){
    if(substr($val, 0, 3) == '...'){ $val = substr($val, 3); }
    if(substr($val, -3, 3) == '...'){ $val = substr($val, 0, -3); }
}

echo '<pre>'.print_r($a, true);

[.josh]

Okay so you are saying that sometimes there will be "..." at the beginning and end, sometimes not, and the goal is to remove them if they are there?  Use the trim()

[nrg_alpha]

I don't think trim will work in this case, because it will wipe out all periods, not just beginning / ending instances of '...' (unless I'm missing something here)

[.josh]

trim only removes stuff on the beginning and end of a string, not stuff in-between. Though you did bring up a good point: It will remove all dots from the end, so if It's a regular sentence with a single dot, that will be removed...but considering (according to his before -> after examples) he seems to be fine with some results having no periods, if he can live will all results being without  a period on the end, this would be ideal.

[nrg_alpha]

Sorry, that's what I meant.. all periods (initial or ending).

Yeah.. I think it would be cool if PHP intregrated a version of trim with perhaps a flag or something that allowed individual characters (as it currently does) or a forced sequence of characters to be removed from beginning / ending).

[sastro]

found the solution

 

<?php
$a=array(
'...multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Virtual currencies are digitized forms ... stripes gravitate towards online money laundering. strategies...',
'Google Bugs May Contribute to Lower AdSense Income... AdSense publishers can now adjust the sizes of fonts within the ad units...',
'...revenues, Carter set out to fine-tune his AdSense program to maximize his cash flow.'
);
foreach($a AS $v){
echo preg_replace('[^\.{3}|\.{3}$]','',$v).'<br>';
}
?>

 

Thanks anyway for help

[nrg_alpha]

found the solution

 

You found a solution (yes, you can do it that was as well as what I have done). Granted, understand that you are making a replacement to a local copy of the array. You are not making a change to the array itself.