Replace bad words with stars problem

[TeddyKiller]

The problem with the code below, is that it doesn't match the bad words. So I removed the if statement, and kept the preg_replace, and.. it erases the text. I'm not sure what I did wrong...

 

$badwords = array(NAUGHTY WORDS HERE);
                 
$sensors = array(STARS HERE);
                 
if(preg_match($badwords, $message)) {
       $message = preg_replace($badwords, $sensors, $message);
}

 

I have $message = preg_replace($patterns, $replacements, $message); above that.. which what that does, is allows smilies in the text. So $patterns = : ), and replaced it with an image. That works fine.. but the bit for bad words doesn't..

 

Any ideas? Cheers

 

---------------------------

Edit

Str_replace did the trick, but why wouldn't it work with preg?

[JasonLewis]

Because preg_replace() is for regular expressions. Depends how you had set out your badwords array though.

 

If you set it out like this:

 

$badwords = array("word1","word2","word3");

 

It wouldn't have worked, however like this it would have:

 

$badwords = array("/word1/","/word2/","/word3/");

[Daniel0]

You'll have to be careful with that approach. For instance, you risk censoring "grass" to "gr***" when you censor "ass".

 

You can "fix" that like this:

 

$badwords = array('bad1', 'bad2', 'bad3', 'ass');

$text = 'This is a test. Ass. Grass. bad1.';

function filterBadwords($text, array $badwords, $replaceChar = '*') {
    return preg_replace_callback(
        array_map(function($w) { return '/\b' . preg_quote($w, '/') . '\b/i'; }, $badwords),
        function($match) use ($replaceChar) { return str_repeat($replaceChar, strlen($match[0])); },
        $text
    );
}

echo filterBadwords($text, $badwords);

 

Output is:

This is a test. ***. Grass. ****.