CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregex
Thread7
Thread7

Reputation: 1090

How to get rid of "echo" in my PHP code

I inherited a big php file that I need to fix. It contains over 500 echo statements that the previous developer included to debug his code. I need to find an easy way to wipe out all these echo statements so I don't have all this junk output to the screen. Sometimes he put the echo on the same line as another piece of code.

One thought I had was to create a function called something like "nullo" that does nothing. Then search and replace the word echo with nullo. But the "echo" usually doesn't have a parenthesis. So PHP just gives an error when it encounters a statement like:

nullo 'LABEL: ';

If I need to go through each one and add parenthesis manually, like this:

nullo('LABEL: ');

I might as well just go ahead and delete all 500+ of them instead. The "echo" is also sometimes on the same line as other necessary code. So I cannot just // out all those lines.

Here is a sample of some of the code I am dealing with.

function sample_func(){
    global $somevar;
    $allnames = "";
    echo 'LABEL: '; foreach($somevar as $var2) foreach($var2 as $pickk){ echo ' -' , $pickk[0]->key , '-' , $pickk[1]->name; $allnames=$allnames.$pickk[1]->name;}
    return $allnames;
}

I am not against downloading and installing some fancy IDE/notepad program that could do a smart search and replace. Any ideas?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 86

Answers (3)

rmoro
rmoro

Reputation: 393

use this:

sed '/^[[:blank:]]*echo.*\;*[[:blank:]]*/d;s/^[[:blank:]]*echo.*\;//;s/ echo.*\;//' your_file.ext > new_file.ext

Edited thanks to comment below :)

The final edit also removes lines which only have echo's making the file much cleaner after the edit.

Upvotes: 1

user2384183
user2384183

Reputation:

How about this?: (^|(;))\s*echo\s.*;

Catches any echo that's at the start of a line or preceded by a semicolon, up until the next semicolon. You'd have to backreference with \2 or $2 (whichever your editor uses) to replace any leading semicolons that the regex erased.

Upvotes: 0

wpcarro
wpcarro

Reputation: 1546

Does this work? It uses a possessive quantifier to reduce the runtime of the regex engine since you're finding over 500 instances... let me know if you'd like any additional clarification or functionality.

\becho\b[^;]++;

\b is a word anchor to make sure that other words like "prechordal" aren't matched.

Good luck!

Upvotes: 2

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