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I'm reviewing a my old php software and I need to do some general corrections. I'm trying to do some of them automatically by regex, but in some cases without success. I use Netbeans.

I need to substitute all:

$line[word_test]

with 

$line['word_test']

excluding the case where word_test is a var (i.e. $abc) or a number or contains the string "const"

I tried with several regex like 

\$line\[[^'|\$|constan](.*)\]

but without success. I need both the regex to write in the "Containing Text" field and that one to write in "Replace with" field of Netbeans replace functionality.

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One option is to use capturing group with a negative lookahead.

(\$line\[)(?!\d|\$\w|[^\]]*const)([^\]]+)(\])

Explanation

  • (\$line\[) Capture group 1, match $line[
  • (?! Negative lookahead, assert what is directly to the right is not
    • \d|\$\w|[^\]]*const Match either a digit, $ followed by a word char or const
  • ) Close lookahead
  • ([^\]]+) Capture group 2, match any char except ]
  • (\]) Capture group 3, match ]

Regex demo

In the replacement use the 3 capturing groups

$1'$2'$3

In case there is an already existing format of $line['word_test1'] as @Nigel Ren points out in the comment, you could extend the negative lookahead:

(\$line\[)(?!'.*?'\]|\d|\$\w|[^\]]*const)([^\]]+)(])

Regex demo

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2 Comments

Not sure if the code needs to cope with ignoring any existing $line['word_test1'] strings in the code.
@NigelRen That is a good point, I will add an update for that case.

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