Splitting paragraphs in a text.

[Sandman]

I am splitting a text block into paragraphs, to be able to add images and stuff
like that to a specific paragraph in a content management system.

Well, right now I'm splittin on two or more newlines, so this text block:

Hello, my nickname is Sandman and I am coding
some PHP

Call me

Would be split into two parts, with "Call me" being the second one.

My problem now is that if I have a text block like below:

Hello, my nickname is Sandman and I am coding
some PHP. Here is an example:

<code>
print "Hello World!";

print "Foo";
</code>

Call me

The above would, given the rules I use now, yield four parts, as such:

---------------------------------------------
Hello, my nickname is Sandman and I am coding
some PHP. Here is an example:
---------------------------------------------
<code>
print "Hello World!";
---------------------------------------------
print "Foo";
</code>
---------------------------------------------
Call me
---------------------------------------------

But I would want it to end up in three parts, as such:

---------------------------------------------
Hello, my nickname is Sandman and I am coding
some PHP. Here is an example:
---------------------------------------------
<code>
print "Hello World!";

print "Foo";
</code>
---------------------------------------------
Call me
---------------------------------------------

So, basically, what I want to do is to split the text block up with the
delimiter "\n{2,}" but not when it is inside an *unclosed* html tag. Some
examples:
<div class='quote'>
Hello, my nickname is Sandman and I am coding
some PHP. Here is an example:

<code>
print "Hello World!";

print "Foo";
</code>

Call me
</div>

Ends up in:

---------------------------------------------
<div class='quote'>
Hello, my nickname is Sandman and I am coding
some PHP. Here is an example:

<code>
print "Hello World!";

print "Foo";
</code>

Call me
</div>
---------------------------------------------

And

<div class='quote'>
Hello, my nickname is Sandman and I am coding
some PHP. Here is an example:

<code>
print "Hello World!";

print "Foo";
</code>
</div>

Call me

Ends up in:

---------------------------------------------
<div class='quote'>
Hello, my nickname is Sandman and I am coding
some PHP. Here is an example:

<code>
print "Hello World!";

print "Foo";
</code>
</div>
---------------------------------------------
Call me
---------------------------------------------
Hopefully you get the idea.

Any ideas on how to solve it?

--
Sandman[.net]

[chotiwallah]

Sandman <[e-mail]> wrote in message news:<mr**********************@individual.net>...

I am splitting a text block into paragraphs, to be able to add images and stuff
like that to a specific paragraph in a content management system.

Well, right now I'm splittin on two or more newlines, so this text block:

Hello, my nickname is Sandman and I am coding
some PHP

Call me

Would be split into two parts, with "Call me" being the second one.

My problem now is that if I have a text block like below:

Hello, my nickname is Sandman and I am coding
some PHP. Here is an example:

<code>
print "Hello World!";

print "Foo";
</code>

Call me

The above would, given the rules I use now, yield four parts, as such:

---------------------------------------------
Hello, my nickname is Sandman and I am coding
some PHP. Here is an example:
---------------------------------------------
<code>
print "Hello World!";
---------------------------------------------
print "Foo";
</code>
---------------------------------------------
Call me
---------------------------------------------

But I would want it to end up in three parts, as such:

---------------------------------------------
Hello, my nickname is Sandman and I am coding
some PHP. Here is an example:
---------------------------------------------
<code>
print "Hello World!";

print "Foo";
</code>
---------------------------------------------
Call me
---------------------------------------------

So, basically, what I want to do is to split the text block up with the
delimiter "\n{2,}" but not when it is inside an *unclosed* html tag. Some
examples:
<div class='quote'>
Hello, my nickname is Sandman and I am coding
some PHP. Here is an example:

<code>
print "Hello World!";

print "Foo";
</code>

Call me
</div>

Ends up in:

---------------------------------------------
<div class='quote'>
Hello, my nickname is Sandman and I am coding
some PHP. Here is an example:

<code>
print "Hello World!";

print "Foo";
</code>

Call me
</div>
---------------------------------------------

And

<div class='quote'>
Hello, my nickname is Sandman and I am coding
some PHP. Here is an example:

<code>
print "Hello World!";

print "Foo";
</code>
</div>

Call me

Ends up in:

---------------------------------------------
<div class='quote'>
Hello, my nickname is Sandman and I am coding
some PHP. Here is an example:

<code>
print "Hello World!";

print "Foo";
</code>
</div>
---------------------------------------------
Call me
---------------------------------------------
Hopefully you get the idea.

Any ideas on how to solve it?

the easiest way would be using empty lines only where you want a
split. if you want empty lines inside tags because of readability you
could simply mask them by i. e. putting in an empty comment. this
works of course only if you can control the output of your cms to that
degree.

micha

[Sandman]

In article <78*************************@posting.google.com> ,
ch*********@web.de (chotiwallah) wrote:

the easiest way would be using empty lines only where you want a
split. if you want empty lines inside tags because of readability you
could simply mask them by i. e. putting in an empty comment. this
works of course only if you can control the output of your cms to that
degree.

But I can't. Thousands of people are writing stuff into the CMS, and I can't
tell them to first replace newlines with character X when they cut'n'paste into
the CMS.

--
Sandman[.net]

[Sandman]

In article <mr**********************@individual.net>, I wrote about splitting a
block of text into an array, but being careful about nested tags.

I have now solved all by myself, and thought I'd might share it (so everyone in
the future won't find an empty thread on google :)

Here is a working example:

#!/usr/bin/php
<?
$text=<<<END
Hello, my nickname is Sandman, and I like PHP, some examples:

<code>
print "Hello World";

print "Foobar";
</code>

Here are nested tags:

<quote>
<quote>
He said he liked flowers
</quote>

Well, he doesn't, ok.

<quote>I like them</quote>

Good for you
</quote>

<div class="paragraph">
Nice paragraph
</div>

<img src="foo.jpg"> <- Nice pic!
END;

$inside = 0; # we begin "outside"
$paragraphs = array();

# no multiple newlines, 2 is max - which means there is a new paragraph
$text = preg_replace("/\n{2,}/", "\n\n", $text);

# These are the container tags we wan't to spare.
$cont="(quote|div|ul|ol|code|pre)";

foreach (split("\n", "$text\n") as $line){
if (preg_match("#<$cont(.*?)>#", $line, $m)){
if (!preg_match("#</$m[1]>#", $line)){
# at this point, we've found the beginning tag
# but not the ending tag, so we're definately inside
$inside++;
}
}
if (preg_match("#</$cont>#", $line, $m)){
if (!preg_match("#<$m[1](.*?)>#", $line)){
# Aha, we have no found an ending tag, but not the tag
# that started it, which means we've stepped out one step
$inside--;
}
}
if (($line == "") && ($inside == 0) && ($agg)){
# Ok, we've reached a "\n\n" place in the textblock
# and we're not inside anything, and we have aggregated
# some text.
$paragraphs[] = $agg;
$agg=""; # reset the aggregation.
continue; # don't process the empty line.
}
$agg.="$line\n"; # Aggregate everything.
print "$inside: $line\n"; # Debugging!
}

foreach ($paragraphs as $p){
print "---------------\n";
print "$p";
}
?>

And the output is:

0: Hello, my nickname is Sandman, and I like PHP, some examples:
1: <code>
1: print "Hello World";
1:
1: print "Foobar";
0: </code>
0: Here are nested tags:
1: <quote>
2: <quote>
2: He said he liked flowers
1: </quote>
1:
1: Well, he doesn't, ok.
1:
1: <quote>I like them</quote>
1:
1: Good for you
0: </quote>
1: <div class="paragraph">
1: Nice paragraph
0: </div>
0: <img src="foo.jpg"> <- Nice pic!
---------------
Hello, my nickname is Sandman, and I like PHP, some examples:
---------------
<code>
print "Hello World";

print "Foobar";
</code>
---------------
Here are nested tags:
---------------
<quote>
<quote>
He said he liked flowers
</quote>

Well, he doesn't, ok.

<quote>I like them</quote>

Good for you
</quote>
---------------
<div class="paragraph">
Nice paragraph
</div>
---------------
<img src="foo.jpg"> <- Nice pic!

--
Sandman[.net]