I'm looking for a way to replace all but first occurrences of a group or some character.
For example a following random string:
+Z1A124B555ND124AB+A555
1,5,2,4,A,B and + are repeating through out the string.
124, 555 are groups of characters that are also reoccurring.
Now, let's say I want to remove every but first occurrence of 555, A and B.
What regex would be appropriate? I could think of an example replacing all:
preg_replace('/555|A|B/','',$string);
Something like ^ that, but I want to keep the first occurrence... Any ideas?
Are your strings always delimited by plus signs? Do 555, A, and B always occur in the first "group" (delimited by +)?
If so, you can split, replace and then join:
$input = '+Z1A124B555+A124AB+A555';
$array = explode('+', $input, 3); // max 3 elements
$array[2] = str_replace(array('555', 'A', 'B'), '', $array[2]);
$output = implode('+', $array);
ps. No need to use regexes, when we can use a simple str_replace
Use the preg_replace_callback
function:
$replaced = array('555' => 0, 'A' => 0, 'B' => 0);
$input = '+Z1A124B555+A124AB+A555';
$output = preg_replace_callback('/555|[AB]/', function($matches) {
static $replaced = 0;
if($replaced++ == 0) return $matches[0];
return '';
}, $input);
This solution could be modified to do what you want: PHP: preg_replace (x) occurence?
Here is a modified solution for you:
<?php
class Parser {
private $i;
public function parse($source) {
$this->i=array();
return preg_replace_callback('/555|A|B/', array($this, 'on_match'), $source);
}
private function on_match($m) {
$first=$m[0];
if(!isset($this->i[$first]))
{
echo "I'm HERE";
$this->i[$first]=1;
}
else
{
$this->i[$first]++;
}
// Return what you want the replacement to be.
if($this->i[$first]>1)
{
$result="";
}
else
{
$result=$m[0];
}
return $result;
}
}
$sample = '+Z1A124B555ND124AB+A555';
$parse = new Parser();
$result = $parse->parse($sample);
echo "Result is: [$result]
";
?>
Best of luck! God Bless!
A more generic function that works with every pattern.
function replaceAllButFirst($pattern, $replacement, $subject) {
return preg_replace_callback($pattern,
function($matches) use ($replacement, $subject) {
static $s;
$s++;
return ($s <= 1) ? $matches[0] : $replacement;
},
$subject
);
}