[SOLVED] replace colon

[Kingy]

within my script i have 3 varibles

$ex[3] $ex[4] $ex[5]

 

when someone writes a sentence it will appear

 

[:hi] [my] [name is kingy]

 

NB: BRACKETS REPRESENT THE ABOVE VARIBLES (the brackets dont exist)

 

what my script with then do is count the characters in the sentence and store them. but what i have done is, becuase the user doesn't actually type the : i've replaced it so that its not there..

 

but now, what i want to do is count the amount of times a smiley or sad face has been written, but because i have replaced the colon from $ex[3] it won't count the smiley face because there won't be any colon.

 

My question is how can i get rid of the first : without getting rid of the rest?

 

 

[ratcateme]

if the colon is always the first character in the first variable you could write some code like this

str_replace  (':', '', $ex[3], 1);

this will limit the replace to just one then you can count the smile faces

 

Scott.

[GingerRobot]

I'm a little confused. If the user does not type the first colon, where does it come from?

 

Perhaps showing us some of your code (using

tags) will help

[GingerRobot]

  Quote

if the colon is always the first character in the first variable you could write some code like this

str_replace  (':', '', $ex[3], 1);

this will limit the replace to just one then you can count the smile faces

 

Scott.

 

Im afraid not. The 4th (and optional) parameter of the str_replace() function is the name of variable that you wish to store the number of replacements made.

[Kingy]

GingerRobot this script is a php irc bot

 

I'll post what the bot reads when something is written on the irc

 

:Kingy!k1hosting@I.am.the.King PRIVMSG #Lobby :hello

:Kingy!k1hosting@I.am.the.King PRIVMSG #Lobby :test

 

as you can see it has the : before anything that is typed

[GingerRobot]

Ok, i see. The substr() function is your friend:

 

<?php
$str = ':Hello';
$str = substr($str,1);
echo $str;//Hello
?>

[Kingy]

ok thanks for that,

 

now to get the smileys, i would use something like preg_match_all() ??

 

what would be the basic code for this

 

i have combined $ex[3] $ex[4] and $ex[5] into one. -> $string

 

preg_match_all("", $string);

 

i think thats way wrong? but something similar?

 

 

[GingerRobot]

Almost. You need preg_replace. You can also use an array of different patterns and replacements:

 

<?php
$patterns[0] = '|:\)|';
$patterns[1] = '|:\(|';
$patterns[2] = '||i';//case insensitive
$replacements[0] = '<img src="path_to_happy_face />"';
$replacements[1] = '<img src="path_to_sad_face />"';
$replacements[2] = '<img src="path_to_very_happy_face />"';
$string = preg_replace($patterns,$replacements,$string);
?>

 

If you add to that, make sure the key of the pattern matches with the key of the replacement.

[GingerRobot]

Having said that, if you're just going to be using smilies, and no bb tags, str_ireplace would be more appropriate:

 

<?php
$patterns[] = '';
$patterns[] = '';
$patterns[] = '';
$replacements[] = '<img src="path_to_happy_face />"';
$replacements[] = '<img src="path_to_sad_face />"';
$replacements[] = '<img src="path_to_very_happy_face />"';
$string = str_ireplace($patterns,$replacements,$string);
?>

[Kingy]

ok thats not really what im looking for...

 

i'll explain this properly

 

eg:

 

$string = some writing blah blah more writing

 

what i want to do is search that $string and match any smiley faces that are found

FOUND 1 SMILE

 

and then if any are found ill do a sql query

$smile = $row['smile'];

then do an sql update adding however many smilies are found

 

the only problem i have is finding out how many there are

[resago]

use replace, but save it to a different variable and replace the smiles with any single character.

then count the length of the string.

 

[Kingy]

Well at the moment i have...

 

<?php
$string = "hi there ";
if (preg_match("", "$string")) {
echo "A Match";
} else {
echo "No Match";
}
?>

 

which returns the error:

PHP Warning:  preg_match(): No ending delimiter ':' found in test.php on line 3

 

 

[resago]

if (preg_match("/.*.*/", "$string")) {

 

[Kingy]

ok new error

 

C:\php>php.exe c:\inetpub\wwwroot\test.php

PHP Warning:  preg_match(): Compilation failed: unmatched parentheses at offset 3 in on line 3

 

 

[resago]

sorry, forgot to escape the ) in the smiley face, put a \ infront of the ) in the smile.

 

[Kingy]

Thankyou thankyou thats A Match

 

cheers,

 

[Kingy]

re-opened this topic for one last question, im unable to get it to work using a ?

 

could someone also explain what all the / and * are all about?

 

its usually easier to write code when u understand it

[corbin]

You could do something like:

 

if(preg_match('/:)/', $m)) {
     $smiley_count = count($m);
     //do sql query
}

 

Although, you might be better of with counting an explode array since regular expressions are slow.....  Or, you could make a function that counts the occurances using strpos and offsets.

 

 

 

(PS.....  This is extremely random, but I know the DA IRC network has a stat page that shows how many times a certain smiley was done....  You don't happen to use that IRC server do you?)

 

Edit:  Bah sorry didn't see the second page x.x.

 

 

// are simply enclosing the pattern

 

The pattern can start with a bunch of different delimiters as long as they're the same character.

 

Examples:

|(.*)|

/(.*)/

~(.*)~

 

The * simply means any number.....

 

In other words /([a]*)/ would mean 0 or more a's.

[Kingy]

so what about getting it to work using a ? (question mark)

 

preg_match('/?/', $string);

 

that there doesn't work, and i've tried a few different things, but nothing seems to work

[Ken2k7]

You may want to escape that ? character.

 

preg_match("/\?/", $string);

[Kingy]

lol even more slashes works now thankyou dude

[GingerRobot]

If you're just matching strings, substr_count() might be more appropriate. It would remove the need for the regular expressions.