特定单词后防止换行（php）

Question

I have a long text and I would like to add a no-wrap after specific key words. Lets say: 'Mr.', 'the', 'an' the only problem is I do not know what word will be after the key. So if I have a text like:

... there is an elephant in the room ...

script should change it to:

... there is <span class="no-wrap">an elephant</span> in <span class="no-wrap"> the room</span> ...

I know that it should be done with regular expression of some sort but I am really bad at those. So any tips on how to do this in php?

Answer 1

Capture Mr., the, an strings and also the following word into a group.

(\b(?:Mr\.|the|an)\h+\S+)

Replacement string:

<span class="no-wrap">$1</span>

DEMO

Code:

<?php
$string = "... there is an elephant in the room ...";
echo preg_replace('~(\b(?:Mr\.|the|an)\h+\S+)~', '<span class="no-wrap">$1</span>', $string)
?>

Output:

... there is <span class="no-wrap">an elephant</span> in <span class="no-wrap">the room</span> ...