根据出现情况替换字符串中的符号。 PHP

Question

I have a string that is formatted by symbols (symbols similar to those used to format questions on this site).

Rules:

1. **Hello** means bold = < b>Hello< /b>

2. *Hello\\ means bulleted list = < li>Hello< /li>

3. Hello\\ means line break = Hello< br>

I want to replace:

1. Every first occurence of ** with < b> and every second ** with < /b>.
2. The same for * with < li> and \\ with < /li>.
3. All \\ that occur without a * somewhere in the string before, should be converted to < br>.

Example string:

$myString = 'Hello my **Friend**,\\here is the stuff you need to buy for me:*knife\\*water bottle\\***fake ID**\\\\\\Thank you in advance and don not forget the **fake ID**!\\Sincerely yours\\Eddy'

Note: This style is not my invention. It is in use and I have to convert it.

I preg_match()-ed parts of it to get the stuff between the tags.

$myString = 'Hello my **Friend**,\\here is the stuff you need to buy for me:*knife\\*water bottle\\***fake ID**\\\\\\Thank you in advance and don not forget the **fake ID**!\\Sincerely yours\\Eddy';
        $result = array();
        $firstBold = '<b>'. preg_match('~\*\*(.*?)\*\*~', $myString, $firstBold) . </b>; 
        $result +=  $firstBold 
        // and so on...

(Ignore mistakes in this, its written from memory)

I didn't consider the words before the first bold, but it's basically the same. This will get the job done at the end but it seems cumbersome to me. I am in search for a more elegant way to do this.

What is the best way to solve this in PHP?

Answer 1

You can use preg_replace. because of your markup your order of replacement will matter.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.preg-replace.php

 $myString = preg_replace("/[*][*]([^*]+)[*][*]/",'<b>${1}</b>',$myString);
 $myString = preg_replace("/[*]([^\/]+)[\/][\/]/",'<li>${1}</li>',$myString);
 $myString = str_replace("//",'<br/>',$myString);