PHP consecutive occurrence of characters replace with other parameter

Question

I have a string like

sadd*sadasdsdsad*sdadsdasdad*asdsadsadsadasdsdsd*asdasdsadasdasdasdasdasdasd*asdasdadasdsdasd*asdsaddasdasdas*

now i want all consecutive *'s to be replaced with  &  respectively. Above string will become

sadd<b>sadasdsdsad</b>sdadsdasdad<b>asdsadsadsadasdsdsd</b>asdasdsadasdasdasdasdasdasd<b>asdasdadasdsdasd</b>asdsaddasdasdas*sdfdsfsd

the last * is not replaced because there is no consecutive pair of star left.

Jan · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-09 06:16:43Z

2

Seems like you could simply do

\*(.+?)((?=$)|\*)
# match a star
# anything else lazily afterwards
# the end of the string
# or another star

And replace this with $1, see a demo on regex101.com.

answered Jun 9, 2017 at 6:06

Jan

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3 Comments

the last star is getting replaced to check same demo at regex101.com

@user609306: Right, adjusted to match at least one character. It's always better to escape special characters like the star.

finally i used this one in PHP echo preg_replace('/*(.*?)*/', '$1',$string);