PCRE help

[Synook]

Hi all,I'm just wondering if anyone could help me work around nesting in a PCRE. For example, I have a string

_This_ is a _short String_

Now, if I wanted it to find the phrases "This" and "short String", but not "This_ is a _short String" by using the _, how would I do it?Perhaps an example of this would be in WikiCode or similar, where "_This_ is a _short String_" would be parsed to "<u>This</u> is a <u>short string</u>" but not "<u>This<u> is a </u>short String</u>".Thanks

[jhecht]

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, could you please give a few more details. From what i can tell you want to take _string_ and turn it into string and in that case i would say something like this would do:

$regExp = array('/_(.*)_/i');$replaceWith = array('<u>\\1</u>');$string = "_This_ is a _short string_";$string = preg_replace($regExp,$replaceWith,$string);

That should do the trick.

[Synook]

Hi Jhecht - yes you are right, that is what I want. However, if I do that then This_ is a _short String is produced, which I didn't want. So, how do I get it to produce This is a short String? Thanks

[jhecht]

$string = "_This_ is supposed to not be _underlined_, so uhm, yeah. what do you think about _that_<br />/hi/ *bob*"; $regEx = array("/_([a-z0-9]+\s?)_/i","/\/([a-z0-9]+\s?)\//i","/\*([a-z0-9]+\s?)\*/i"); $replace=array("<u>\\1</u>","<i>\\1</i>","<b>\\1</b>"); $string = preg_replace($regEx,$replace,$string); echo $string;

That works fine for me, I also added things for bold and italics

[Synook]

Thanks :)Hmm... but what about something like "_This is underlined_ while this is not. _So is this_"? The script would only work for single words. This is the bit I couldn't get around

[jhecht]

$string = "_hey, you, yes, you._ supposed to be underlined.<br /> /This is supposed to be/ *bold*<br /> _ another underline _";echo "String before pre-format:<br />".$string."<br />";$regEx = array("/_([a-z0-9\s,\.]+)_/i","/\/([a-z0-9\s,\.]+)\//i","/\*([a-z0-9\s,\.]+)\*/i");$replace=array("<u>\\1</u>","<i>\\1</i>","<b>\\1</b>");$string = preg_replace($regEx,$replace,$string);echo "string after format:<br />";echo $string;

Works just fine for me, although i'm sure that there's an easier way to include punctuation, i just dont know how.