I am trying to make it so that asterisks in my string denote list elements in an unordered list.
$first_char = substr($p,0,1);
if($first_char == '*'){
$p = '<ul>' . $p . '</li></ul>';
$p = str_replace('*' , '<li>',$p);
$p = str_replace('\n' , '</li>',$p);
}
However, if this makes it so that no asterisks can be used as content in the list elements. Is there any way to change this?
<?php
$pattern = '/(?:^|\n)\s*\*[\t ]*([^\n\r]+)/';
$replacement = '<li>${1}</li>';
$count = 0;
$p = preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $p, -1, $count);
if ($count > 0) {
$pattern = '/(<li>.*?(?:<\/li>)(?:\s*<li>.*?(?:<\/li>))*)/';
$replacement = '<ul>${1}</ul>';
$p = preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $p);
}
?>
* Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, * consec*tetur adipiscing elit
*Curabitur ullamcorper neque sit amet
* Pellente*sque nec quam rhoncus
Suspendisse ut lacinia arcu
* Nullam in vulpu*tate tellus
<ul><li>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, * consec*tetur adipiscing elit</li>
<li>Curabitur ullamcorper neque sit amet</li>
<li>Pellentesque nec quam rhoncus</li></ul>
Suspendisse ut lacinia arcu
<ul><li>Nullam in vulputate tellus</li></ul>
This may not be the best solution but you could always not use * in the string ($p). Instead, write every asterisk as its HTML code equivalent, in this case *. When shown in a browser, user sees nice asterisk but str_replace should not see it. Or you could introduce some escaping characters, but that may get a bit complicated.
This is the simple way:
if(substr($p,0,1) == '*'){
$p = '<ul>' . substr($p,1) . '</ul>;
}
linodes into asterisks using thecontentproperty in css. what I wrote below wasn't really an answer to your direct question, so I deleted it. If you want to look into this, there's some useful information here: stackoverflow.com/a/12216973/3044080