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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Understanding regex behaviour when using quantifiers Post 302749759 by jim mcnamara on Saturday 29th of December 2012 11:24:13 AM
Old 12-29-2012
FWIW: The standards issues with regex are something that that appears to be coming together well. Or better anyway.

Basically when you are using UNIX tools, IMO, regex use has this sort of feel to it:
Code:
If today == Tuesday 
  then 
     we must be in Belgium
end if

This is the way UNIX was overall back in the 90's - XOPEN, SUS, SVID, SYSV, BSD, Torvalds etc.

Henry Spencer ( zoologist) wrote the first open source version of UNIX regex, which then allowed the creation of cascade of modern regex "flavors". Larry Wall appears to have used Spencer's regex as a model for perl regex, for example.

So, if you understand the difference between extended regular expressions (ERE) and basic (BRE) you are well on the way.... to Belgium.
 

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PREG_REPLACE_CALLBACK(3)						 1						  PREG_REPLACE_CALLBACK(3)

preg_replace_callback - Perform a regular expression search and replace using a callback

SYNOPSIS
mixed preg_replace_callback (mixed $pattern, callable $callback, mixed $subject, [int $limit = -1], [int &$count]) DESCRIPTION
The behavior of this function is almost identical to preg_replace(3), except for the fact that instead of $replacement parameter, one should specify a $callback. PARAMETERS
o $pattern - The pattern to search for. It can be either a string or an array with strings. o $callback - A callback that will be called and passed an array of matched elements in the $subject string. The callback should return the replacement string. This is the callback signature: string handler (array $matches) You'll often need the $callback function for a preg_replace_callback(3) in just one place. In this case you can use an anonymous function to declare the callback within the call to preg_replace_callback(3). By doing it this way you have all information for the call in one place and do not clutter the function namespace with a callback function's name not used anywhere else. Example #1 preg_replace_callback(3) and anonymous function <?php /* a unix-style command line filter to convert uppercase * letters at the beginning of paragraphs to lowercase */ $fp = fopen("php://stdin", "r") or die("can't read stdin"); while (!feof($fp)) { $line = fgets($fp); $line = preg_replace_callback( '|<p>s*w|', function ($matches) { return strtolower($matches[0]); }, $line ); echo $line; } fclose($fp); ?> o $subject - The string or an array with strings to search and replace. o $limit - The maximum possible replacements for each pattern in each $subject string. Defaults to -1 (no limit). o $count - If specified, this variable will be filled with the number of replacements done. RETURN VALUES
preg_replace_callback(3) returns an array if the $subject parameter is an array, or a string otherwise. On errors the return value is NULL If matches are found, the new subject will be returned, otherwise $subject will be returned unchanged. CHANGELOG
+--------+---------------------------------+ |Version | | | | | | | Description | | | | +--------+---------------------------------+ | 5.1.0 | | | | | | | The $count parameter was added | | | | +--------+---------------------------------+ EXAMPLES
Example #2 preg_replace_callback(3) example <?php // this text was used in 2002 // we want to get this up to date for 2003 $text = "April fools day is 04/01/2002 "; $text.= "Last christmas was 12/24/2001 "; // the callback function function next_year($matches) { // as usual: $matches[0] is the complete match // $matches[1] the match for the first subpattern // enclosed in '(...)' and so on return $matches[1].($matches[2]+1); } echo preg_replace_callback( "|(d{2}/d{2}/)(d{4})|", "next_year", $text); ?> The above example will output: April fools day is 04/01/2003 Last christmas was 12/24/2002 Example #3 preg_replace_callback(3) using recursive structure to handle encapsulated BB code <?php $input = "plain [indent] deep [indent] deeper [/indent] deep [/indent] plain"; function parseTagsRecursive($input) { $regex = '#[indent]((?:[^[]|[(?!/?indent])|(?R))+)[/indent]#'; if (is_array($input)) { $input = '<div style="margin-left: 10px">'.$input[1].'</div>'; } return preg_replace_callback($regex, 'parseTagsRecursive', $input); } $output = parseTagsRecursive($input); echo $output; ?> SEE ALSO
PCRE Patterns, preg_quote(3), preg_replace(3), preg_last_error(3), Anonymous functions, information about the callback type. PHP Documentation Group PREG_REPLACE_CALLBACK(3)
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