Naive Dog and Cat REGEX question?

[php_forever]

All right, so I've been sober for YEARS and now all of a sudden I'm tempted to have just ONE.....

 

OOPS, wrong forum :-)

 

Okay, here's my goal: to replace anything beginning with the first instance of "dog" and the last instance of "cat" with the word "animal."

 

Note: everything's case-insensitive, AND, sometimes there are characters between dog and cat (example: dogxxxxcat) and sometimes there are no characters between dog and cat (example: lfjljfdjldogcatlsfjsjsljslj)

 

Examples:

$string = 'My dogcat is cool'; (becomes My animal is cool)

$string = 'Wonderfuldogcatandappleappleapplecatcatcat'; (becomes Wonderfulanimal)

$string = 'dog cat'; (becomes animal)

$string = 'dogcatdogcatdogcatdogcatdogcatdog'; (becomes animaldog)

 

I know the answer is probably easy, I'm not trying to waste anybody's time -- but I've been googling this for nearly 3 days, I think I have probably "seen" the answer, but have a mental block, I just can't figure it out.

 

Thank you!!

[requinix]

What's the most obvious thing to try? Have you tried it? Or what have you tried?

[tryingtolearn]

Your goal actually spells it all out for you!

Okay, here's my goal: to replace anything beginning with the first instance of "dog" and the last instance of "cat" with the word "animal."

 

beginning with the first instance of "dog" = stripos [Find the position of the first occurrence of a case-insensitive substring in a string]

 

the last instance of "cat" = strripos [Find the position of the last occurrence of a case-insensitive substring in a string]

 

replace anything ... with the word "animal." = substr_replace [Replace text within a portion of a string]

 

I would also look into strlen when you get to strripos.

[NotionCommotion]

 

Your goal actually spells it all out for you!

beginning with the first instance of "dog" = stripos [Find the position of the first occurrence of a case-insensitive substring in a string]

 

the last instance of "cat" = strripos [Find the position of the last occurrence of a case-insensitive substring in a string]

 

replace anything ... with the word "animal." = substr_replace [Replace text within a portion of a string]

 

I would also look into strlen when you get to strripos.

 

I could be wrong, but it sounds like he is trying to learn regex, and wanted to use regex for this example.  I messed around with it for a bit, but I am really bad at regex.

[tryingtolearn]

Guess you are right, missed that in the title...

[NotionCommotion]

Guess you are right, missed that in the title...

But it is the thought that counts

[tryingtolearn]

Didn't even think of using regular expressions for the example posted

Seemed a straight forward use for the functions I listed..

[NotionCommotion]

I don't know.  Maybe he is really interested in cats and dogs, and your solution is perfect.

[requinix]

String functions certainly could do it, though it's a little harder since you need to do error checking (eg, what if there is no "dog" or "cat", or what if "dog" comes after "cat").

The regex version would be

$output = preg_replace('/dog.*cat/', 'animal', $input);

[tryingtolearn]

Good point,

it is a bit more with the string functions

<?php
//$string = 'My dogcat is cool'; //(becomes My animal is cool)
//$string = 'Wonderfuldogcatandappleappleapplecatcatcat'; //(becomes Wonderfulanimal)
//$string = 'dog cat'; //(becomes animal)
//$string = 'dogcatdogcatdogcatdogcatdogcatdog'; //(becomes animaldog)
//$string = 'catdogcatdogcatdogcatdogcatdogcatdog'; //(becomes animaldog)
//$string = 'cat cat cat';
$string = 'cat dog dog cat dog';

$start = "dog";
$stop = "cat";
$replace = "animal";


//get Start Position
$startPos = stripos($string, $start);
//get Stop Position
$stopPos = strripos($string, $stop);

if($stopPos === false || $startPos === false){
echo "Sorry, We couldnt find a string to replace!<br /> $string";
}else{
   echo substr_replace($string, $replace, $startPos, ($stopPos+strlen($stop))) . "<br />\n";
}

?>

If it can be done w/ string functions I tend to lean that way

Guess its the intimidation factor

[NotionCommotion]

The regex version would be

 

I  really gotta get this regex thing licked!