str_replace with regex

[Craig Hopson]

hi guys what am i doing wrong

$url1 = "http://twitterrooms.co.uk";echo str_replace('~&http://[a-zA-Z0-9]','*',$url1);

the output i would like is http://***********.**.**

[boen_robot]

You're simply using the wrong function. Use preg_replace() instead. str_replace() only replaces one literal string with another.

[Ingolme]

str_replace doesn't use regular expressions. Try preg_replace()

[Craig Hopson]

Thanks been trying for ages

[Craig Hopson]

any help with the regex code?

[Ingolme]

Well, one problem may be that your string doesn't start with "~&". Also, the expression is telling the interpretter to replace the entire string with a single asterisk.

[Craig Hopson]

Still cant get this code to work i have broken it back to basics still giving error

$test = "http://seekface.com/themes/blue/ico.gif";$URL = "www.seekface.com";echo preg_replace($URL," ",$test);

[Ingolme]

That's because the expression doesn't match anything in the string. Also, the "." character has a meaning in regular expressions, and your expression is missing delimiters.

[Craig Hopson]

so how can i fix this?

[Ingolme]

The first thing is to learn regular expressions. A good resource is http://regular-expressions.info