Regular Expression Nightmare

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Hello Guys,
there is this reg-ex that i can seem to solve, any help would be appreciated,
i wana replace the searched word into an HREF,but avoid the nesting of HREFs, what im doin rite now, is that i place garbage '<##' and '##>' in the begining and end of the searched word in the text that has already been changed and then replace the words not in between <## and ##>

C#

// placing <## and ##> 
$temptext = preg_replace('/(<a([^>]+)>)(.*?)(<\/a>)/is', "$1<##$3##>$4", $blogvalue["content"]);

//then search the word not in <## and ##>

$search = "/([^<##a-zA-Z'=:\"]".mysql_escape_string($value["keyword"]).")/is";

// replace it with the HREF

$replace = ' <a href="'.$value[" url="].'">'.mysql_escape_string($value["keyword"]).'</a>';

//assign it to the new content
$newContent = preg_replace($search, $replace, $temptext);

now the problem is that this also changes the link inside the HREF,
for example, if i have some link already changed in my content like
<a href="www.brown.com">Brown</a> and i wana change the rest of the 'Brown' in the content, it would ignore the 'Brown' inside the anchors, but would change the 'brown' in www.brown.com .....

any ideas

[Modified: added pre tags, though I'm not sure what language that is...the $ made me think PHP, but not with comments starting with //]

Posted 30-Jun-10 4:17am

arifeen123

Updated 30-Jun-10 4:44am

William Winner

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OriginalGriff · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-30T05:58:00

Solution 1

I am not totally sure what you are trying to do, but I can't help thinking you are going about it the wrong way.
If what you are trying to do is replace the link text that is shown to the user in

<a href="www.brown.com">Brown</a>

so it becomes

<a href="www.brown.com">Green</a>

then why not try something a bit simpler:

(?<Tag><[^<]*>)|(?<data>[^<]*)

which breaks it into groups: those with tags, and those without.
You can then only change the "data" group items.

If that isn't what you are trying to do, then please give us better detail.

Posted 30-Jun-10 5:58am

OriginalGriff

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arifeen123 30-Jun-10 12:15pm

thanks for the reply,
what im tryna do here is that i an developing a sevice which will change some words in a blog into Anchors, but should avoid the words already between anchor tags, means it should change "Brown" but not
<a href="someURL">Brown</a> , this is very simple,and working, but as soon as i get somehting like
<a href="Brown">Brown</a> , it changes the "Brown" inside the anchor tag, i.e and puts another anchor in place of Brown, so it becomes something like
<a href="<a href="Brown">Brown</a>">Brown</a> , i hope i made it clear, if not plz do tell me

arifeen123 1-Jul-10 5:15am

sorry about the formatting of previous comment, the editor removed all the HTML from my comment :S , its correct now

Adrabi Abderrahim · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-30T06:12:00

this is by Perl (just example)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $url = '<a href="http://www.adrabi.org">adrabi</a>';
$url=~s/(<a([^>]+)>)(.*?)(<\/a>)/$1<##$3##>$4/;
print "$url\n";
my $q = "<##" . ( 'adrabi' ) . "##>";
$url=~s/$q/You Win/;
print $url

output :

<<a href="http://www.adrabi.org"><##adrabi##></a>
<<a href="http://www.adrabi.org">You Win</a>

just change from

$search = "/([^<##a-zA-Z'=:\"]".mysql_escape_string($value["keyword"]).")/is";

to

$search = "/<##".mysql_escape_string($value["keyword"])."##>/is";

for find anything in <## and ##>

Regular Expression Nightmare

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Regular Expression Nightmare

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