CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregexstr-replace
user5483305
user5483305

Reputation:

Escape brackets within string

I need to escape brackets within a file name. Currently I do this as follows:

$string = 'folder1/folder2/foldera/abc/myFile(2).jpg';

str_replace(')', '\)', str_replace('(', '\(', $string));

echo $string;

// outputs: folder1/folder2/foldera/abc/myFile\(2\).jpg

It is inefficient as this is executed within a loop of hundreds of results. Is there a better, cleaner more efficient way of achieving this?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 7762

Answers (4)

Parixit
Parixit

Reputation: 3855

You can reduce one call to str_replace(), by using array.

str_replace(array(')', '('),  array('\)', '\('), $string);

P.S. : Another option would be preg_quote(), but in your case you want to escape only ( and ). And preg_quote() will escape all regex characters.

Upvotes: 3

Antony
Antony

Reputation: 4350

I wonder if a better function is escapeshellcmd (http://php.net/manual/en/function.escapeshellcmd.php) which

Following characters are preceded by a backslash: &#;`|*?~<>^()[]{}$\, \x0A and \xFF. ' and " are escaped only if they are not paired. In Windows, all these characters plus % and ! are replaced by a space instead.

Upvotes: 0

Mahadeva Prasad
Mahadeva Prasad

Reputation: 709

Try this

$findstring = array('(',')');
$escpestring = array('\(','\)');
$string = 'folder1/folder2/foldera/abc/myFile(2).jpg';
$output = str_replace($findstring,$escpestring,$string);
echo $output;

Upvotes: 2

jiboulex
jiboulex

Reputation: 3031

I think you are looking for preg_quote :

$string = preg_quote($string);

or something more like :

$string = str_replace([')', '('], ['\\)', '\\('], $string);

Upvotes: 2

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