Replace one character with another

Hi Jerry,

Here's the code you're looking for:

$record['group_code'] = preg_replace("/[-_]/", " ", $record['group_code'] );

/[-_]/ means "match a single character in the set [-_]". preg_replace() will repeat the match as many times as it can.

/^\s*-/i means "match from the start of the string, allowing any number of whitespace chatacters (i.e. tabs, spaces, newlines), then a single - character, without respect to case".

Regular expressions can be very tricky.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any more questions or comments! :)

It worked perfectly (what did I expect). And tricky is definitely the word of the day.

Thanks!!!

And thanks for the explanation as well.

So if I wanted to replaced any dashes or underscores with spaces as well, would I add the entire snippet again, including the comma?

"/[__]/", "/[-_]/",

Also, how would I replace a dash with a space, and an underscore with a star (just to demonstrate the replacement of 2 (or more) characters with other specific characters?

Thanks again, and again, and....

Jerry

Hi gkornbluth,

The first argument (before the comma) is the pattern to match; the second argument is what the match should be replaced with.

$record['group_code'] = preg_replace("/-/", " ", $record['group_code'] );

The above code will replace any occurrence of a dash ("-") in the string with " ".

$record['group_code'] = preg_replace("/[-_]/", " ", $record['group_code'] );

The above code will replace any occurrence of either a dash ("-") or an underscore ("_") in the string with " ".

$record['group_code'] = preg_replace("/-/", " ", $record['group_code'] );
$record['group_code'] = preg_replace("/_/", "*", $record['group_code'] );

The above code will replace any occurrence of a dash ("-") in the string with a space (" "). Then it will replace any occurrence of an underscore ("_") with an asterisk ("*").

Hope this helps! You might want to read a chapter or two on regular expressions if you want to learn how this stuff all works. :)

Chris,

Thanks for the explanation.

It helps to understand and not just paste some code.

Best,

Jerry