Perhaps This'Ll Be My Final Regex Question

[HartleySan]

My current regex conundrum is as follows:

 

I have used the following regex pattern to capture all the HTML between a bunch of pre tags (of which there are many sets):

 

/(?<=<pre>)([\s\S]+?)(?=\<\/pre>)/

 

All the content (the HTML between the pre tags) is stored in group reference $1. I can output the results as follows:

 

echo preg_replace('/(?<=<pre>)([\s\S]+?)(?=\<\/pre>)/','$1',$content);

 

However, because the HTML contains all sorts of angle brackets, etc., you can't actually see anything. As such, I want to run the content (i.e., $1) through a function like htmlentities as follows:

 

echo preg_replace('/(?<=<pre>)([\s\S]+?)(?=\<\/pre>)/',htmlentities('$1'),$content);

 

But this doesn't work. Is this even possible (what I'm trying to do), or is it just that my syntax is no good?

 

Thank you all in advance.

[Stuart]

Hi HartleySan,

 

You can use functions inside preg_replace however not in it's default implementation. PREG_REPLACE has a special modifier 'e' which when placed after the pattern causes references in the replacement element to be evaluated as PHP code. Here's an example from the PHP manual:

 

<?php
preg_replace("/(<\/?)(\w+)([^>]*>)/e", 
            "'\\1'.strtoupper('\\2').'\\3'", 
            $html_body);
?>

 

I've never had cause to use it but thats the premise.

[HartleySan]

That totally worked! Thanks a lot.