preg_replace() : pattern search and replace

$string=" Welcome to html  & HTML section";
$string=preg_replace("/html/","MySQL",$string);
echo $string;

Output

Welcome to MySQL & HTML section

Syntax

preg_replace('search_string','replace_string','main_string',limit,count);

Search_string:Enter the pattern of search string. This can be an array.
replace_string: If search string is found then this string ( replace_string ) is to be replaced.
main_string:This is our main string on which search will applied and replaced with replace string.
Limit :(optional ) We can specify how many times or occurrence of search to be replaced. It can be set to -1 for unlimited search and replace.
Count: ( optional )Returns the variable storing number of times search and replace is used within the string.

Example

<?Php
$string=" Welcome to plus2et.com , you can read html, php , jquery & HTML here";
$string=preg_replace("/html/","MySQL",$string);
echo $string;
?>

Output is here

Welcome to plus2et.com , you can read MySQL, php , jquery & HTML here

Note that we could change only html , not HTML . This is a case sensitive search and replace. To make it case in sensitive we have to add one i after the string delimiters.

$string=preg_replace("/html/i","MySQL",$string);

Now it is not case sensitive and both occurrence of the string HTML & html will be replaced with MySQL

Delimiters

To mark the starting and ending of the string we have used delimiters, in above case we used / as delimiters. However we can use any non-alphanumeric, non-backslash, non-whitespace character. Here is a list of commonly used delimiters to create patterns for searching.

Forward slash / , hash sign #, tildes ~

Counting Number of Replacements

We have one optional count variable which stores the number of replacements done by preg_replace().

<?Php
$string=" Welcome to plus2et.com , you can read html, php , jquery & HTML here";
$string=preg_replace("#html#i","MySQL",$string,-1,$count);
echo $string;
echo "<br>Total replacement done : $count ";
?>

Output is here

Welcome to plus2et.com , you can read MySQL, php , jquery & MySQL here
Total replacement done : 2

If you are dynamically building a query by taking different conditions connected by AND operator then this code is useful as you can replace the first occurrence of AND with a WHERE to complete your query.

$sql=preg_replace("/AND/","WHERE",$sql,1);

String Functions ucfirst(): First char to upper case str_replace(): String replace Counting Sub string inside a string

Subhendu Mohapatra

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preg_replace() string pattern search and replacment

Syntax

Example

Delimiters

Counting Number of Replacements

Subhendu Mohapatra