preg_replace problem

[atl_andy]

Taking a shot that this will be solved.  The following will add (' to the first word in $file.  I need to be able to add ') to the end as well, so ABC will become ('ABC').  However, I can't get it to add (' to all the words.  I tried using g to globally add, but it didn't work. (user error of course)  My thought is to send the results of $str through another for loop to add the ') to the end.  But I'm lost.  Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

<?php
    $file = ("/var/www/html/string.php");
    $lines = file_get_contents($file);

    for ($i=0; $i < count($lines); $i++)
    {
      $str = preg_replace("/^/","(' ",$lines); //I added some spaces for easier reading.
      echo "$str\n";
    }

[atl_andy]

Update:  I added m in the regex and it add (' to the beginning of each word in the file.  Now to add it to the end and write the results to a file....

 

<?php
    $file = ("/var/www/html/string.php");
    $lines = file_get_contents($file);

    for ($i=0; $i < count($lines); $i++)
    {
      $str = preg_replace("/^/m","(' ",$lines); //I added the m.
      echo "$str\n";
    }

[atl_andy]

Update #2:

 

<?php
    $file = ("/var/www/html/string.php");
    $lines = file_get_contents($file);

    for ($i=0; $i < count($lines); $i++)
    {
      $str = preg_replace("/^/m","(' ",$lines);

    }

     for ($i=0; $i < count($lines); $i++)
    {
      $sta = preg_replace("/$/m"," ') ",$str);
      echo "$str\n";
    }

[effigy]

echo $lines = preg_replace('/([a-z]+)/i', "('$1')", $lines);

[atl_andy]

That's nice.  I had to modify a bit because some items are alpha-numeric with some dashes.

 

The end result was:

 

echo $lines = preg_replace('/([a-z0-9-]+)/i', "('$1');", $lines);

 

 

And it worked perfectly.  Thanks for your help!  I'm using it to parse text files so I can import into sql.

 

One other question....the results are shown in my broswer like:

 

result result result result

result result result result

 

but I need:

 

result

result

result

 

Any suggestions?

[effigy]

Always place the hyphen first in a character class since it's a metacharacter. You can also add a new line after each word:

 

echo $lines = preg_replace('/([-a-z\d]+)/i', "('$1')\n", $lines);

[discomatt]

Either that, or escape the hyphen using \-

[atl_andy]

Had to escape because there are a few other characters I had to add.  The new line piece still isn't working...no biggie.  Everything else has saved me many hours of c&p.

 

Thanks again!

[discomatt]

Newlines can also be \r\n (on windows-based machines.

 

I usually check for newlines using

 

(?:\r\n|\n|\r)

[effigy]

The new line piece still isn't working...no biggie.

 

Have you viewed the source?

[atl_andy]

It's not there since I'm using only PHP, the only thing that shows is the results of the replace.  I think you'll tell me something should be there?

[effigy]

If you're not using the CLI and checking results through a browser, you won't see line breaks because they don't honor them (unless you use the pre tag). You can, however, see them in the source.

[atl_andy]

The pre tags did it.  It's been a while since I used them.

 

Thanks for the help!

[discomatt]

perhaps you wanted nl2br()?