Beginner Regex. Change Adam John to x y.

[mac_gabe]

I think I may have known how to do this once but I've definitely forgotten now. Please help.

 

I have a text with many instance of "Adam" and "John" in it.

 

In a single find-and-replace (I don't want to use 2 passes) I want to replace all instance of "Adam" with "x", and "John" with "y". In fact the actual example is a little more complex, but this will solve it.

 

I'm struggling with this:

 

$search="@(Adam)|(John)@";
$replace="@x|y@";
$text = preg_replace($search, $replace, $text); 

I know there should be a back reference - something like $1 or $2 in the replace term probably; but that's not going to produce the letters x or y. So I'm stuck.

 

Thanks for any help.

Edited April 25, 2013 by mac_gabe

[Jessica]

str_replace Edited April 25, 2013 by Jessica

[mac_gabe]

Thanks Jessica!