Posted by Frank Bax on 01/14/06 00:00

Is this the wrong forum for this question - or does no-one else have a clue
about this either?


At 09:43 AM 1/12/06, Frank Bax wrote:
>As I understand the docs for preg_replace(), I can enclose an PCRE
>expression in parenthesis and use a backreference in the replace string;
>but it's not working!
>
>Data coming from another system contains a lot of data in one text record
>which I must parse. Individual elements in the record are separated by
>$. I want to "fix" elements that contain
> dollar-alpha-space-space-digits-dollar
>and replace the second space (between word and number) with a plus
>character to end up with
> dollar-alpha-space-plus-digits-dollar
>
>An example of input string:
> $prop = '$Fencing 11$Lumber 17$Weight: 317 Stones$Energy Resist
> 2%$';
>Notice that Fencing and Lumber have two spaces. I want to end up with:
> $prop = '$Fencing +11$Lumber +17$Weight: 317 Stones$Energy Resist
> 2%$';
>Notice that original and final strings are the same length.
>
>preg_replace( ' (\d+\$)', '+$1', $prop ); /* results in
>dollar-alpha-space-space-plus, why have digits-dollar have disappeared? */
>
>$Fencing +Lumber +Weight: 317 Stones$Energy Resist 2%$
>
>Although the docs say that $0 should backreference the whole pattern,
>instead it seems to match the pattern in parenthesis, but this code :
>preg_replace( ' (\d+\$)', '+$0', $prop ); /* results in
>dollar-alpha-space-space-plus-digits-dollar */
>
>$Fencing +11$Lumber +17$Weight: 317 Stones$Energy Resist 2%$
>
>Still contains the two blanks!!
>
>In neither of my test cases is the result string the same length as original.
>
>I'm running PHP 4.4.0 on OpenBSD 3.7

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