Regular Expressions

[exidas]

Hi guys,
i need replace all specified characters (in this case its "N") between the square parentheses by the question mark ("?"). I have dynamic/variable string mask, for example something like CON[NNNN][YYYY] and as output i need to get CON[????][YYYY]. So simply explained replace everything between parentheses by specified sign as many times as the length of match is.

I'm looking for something like:
preg_replace("/\[N+\]/","?","CON[NNNN][YYYY]");

As expected, this pattern replaces just match [NNNN] by one ? instead of [????].

Thanks for any reply.

[Dormilich]

not sure if there’s a better way, but as a temporary work-around you can use the match (from a preg_match()) in a str_replace() to simply replace all Ns and then replace the result of that in the original string.

[exidas]

I don't know if i exactly understand what you mean. Can you write down some simple example of your imagine? Do you mean sthg like this?

str_replace(preg_match('/(\[)(N+)(\])/', '?', $mask));

Cause this will replace match with single question mark again. Thanks very much.

[Dormilich]

something along

// somewhat pseudo code
preg_match('#\[(N+)\]#', $str, $matches);
$x   = str_replace('N', '?', $match1)
$str = str_replace($match0, $x, $str);

[exidas]

works great with some differences... final function:

    protected function prepare_mask_to_edit($identifier,$required_mask=null) {
    $mask = (!is_null($required_mask)) ? $required_mask : $this->mask;
    preg_match('#\[('.$identifier.'+)\]#', $mask,$matches);
        if(is_array($matches)) {
            $question_mark = str_replace($identifier,'?',$matches[1]);
            $editable_mask = str_replace($matches[1], $question_mark, $mask);
        }
    return $editable_mask;
    }

[Dormilich]

note: $matches is always an array. the questions is whether the array length is correct or if there are any findings.