I have a string with the same character in it several times and I want to replace each occurrence of this character with a different string from an array. I.e. just like in prepared statements:
String: "SELECT * FROM x WHERE a = ? AND b = ?"
Array: ['alpha', 'beta']
Result: "SELECT * FROM x WHERE a = alpha AND b = beta"
If you have control over what the replacement character is, use sprintf
sprintf('Hello %s, how %s %s?', 'World', 'are', 'you');
or vsprintf:
vsprintf('Hello %s, how %s %s?', array('World', 'are', 'you'));
And even if you don't:
$str = 'Hello ?, I hope ? ?.';
$str = str_replace('?', '%s', $str);
$str = sprintf($str, "World", "you're", "fine");
vsprintf() is awesome. No idea why I'm such a huge fan of it but I just am. 8)
Try this:
$str = "SELECT * FROM x WHERE a = ? AND b = ?";
$arr = array("alpha", "beta");
foreach ($arr as $s)
$str = preg_replace("/\?/", $s, $str, 1);
echo $str;
See here. The fourth Parameter limits the maximum replaces per run to one instead of unlimited.
vsprintf and he could also use sprintf+call_user_func (though the last one would be awkward).Without regex functions (as a bonus, also allows replacement of arbitrary strings, not just characters):
function replacement($string, $search, array $replacements) {
$pos = 0;
while (($f = strpos($string, $search, $pos)) !== FALSE) {
$r = array_shift($replacements);
$string = substr($string, 0, $f) . $r .
substr($string, $f + strlen($search));
$pos = $f + strlen($r);
}
return $string;
}
Example:
echo replacement("sf sdf aaasdf sdsaaaaggg", "aa",
array("alpha", "beta", "gammma"));
gives:
sf sdf alphaasdf sdsbetagammmaggg
