CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregexpreg-replace
Chris
Chris

Reputation: 6042

preg_replace() returns empty string

preg_replace() is returning an empty string for the following line of code. The aim is to replace anything that's not a number with a hyphen. Through an online tester I believe the regex catches the right things, but for some reason this line is always returning an empty string.

preg_last_error() returns no error. Any suggestions?

$subRef = preg_replace("/[^(\d)]/g", "-", $subRef);

Upvotes: 1

Views: 5314

Answers (2)

Chris
Chris

Reputation: 6042

For people finding this on Google, the issue was my g flag.

As I understand, PHP doesn't have a global flag, as the function you use decides if the regex is global or not.

Credit for this answer to Mario in the comments on the question.

Upvotes: 9

Marc B
Marc B

Reputation: 360632

Try

preg_replace('/\D/', '-', $subRef);

instead. \D is "not-a-digit"

php > $foo = 'abc123def';
php > echo preg_replace('/\D/', '-', $foo);
---123---

Upvotes: 5

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