preg/str replace with wild card php

Question

want to repalce /randomword/ (wildcard) with /page-1/ so url would be replaced as http://www.example.com/randomword/page-1/fixed/index?ok=as

$url="http://www.example.com/randomword/fixed/index?ok=as";


$url= preg_replace('//(.*?)/fixed', '/randomword/page-1/fixed', $url);

not working the / confuses me when i dont know when to escape it

Regex's need delimiters in PHP. php.net/manual/en/regexp.reference.delimiters.php — chris85
– chris85, Commented Jan 19, 2017 at 4:27
See examples here, php.net/manual/en/function.preg-replace.php. The first / is the opening delimiter the last / is the closing one. Everything inbetween is the regex. From the first link note: If the delimiter needs to be matched inside the pattern it must be escaped using a backslash. If the delimiter appears often inside the pattern, it is a good idea to choose another delimiter in order to increase readability.... so ~/(.*?)/fixed~ i think would resolve your issue. You also might prefer any non / over (.*?). — chris85
– chris85, Commented Jan 19, 2017 at 4:33
If /fixed/ is constant you could just str_replace that by prepending the new dir on it. — chris85
– chris85, Commented Jan 19, 2017 at 4:43
Possible duplicate of What Delimiter to use for preg_replace in PHP (replace working outside of PHP but not inside) — chris85
– chris85, Commented Jan 19, 2017 at 5:11

Koppie · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-07 21:31:54Z

1

There is no wild card for str_replace(); you want to use preg_replace() instead.

Try this:

$url= preg_replace('~/(.*?)/fixed~', '/randomword/page-1/fixed', $url);

In addition, here's a great tool to help you build regular expressions in different languages: http://txt2re.com/

1 Answer 1